Body intensifies child labour fight in Dowa

Winrock International, a human rights organisation, says knowledge on development rights can help fight child labour in the country.

The organisation programmes director Dalitso Baloyi said this in Mponela during a week-long training on development rights for village development committees (VDCs) and area development committees (ADCs) from traditional authirities (T/As) Kayembe and Dzoole in Dowa.

“We are implementing Achieving Reduction of Child Labour in Support of Education [Arise] programme with funding from Japan Tobacco International [JTI] in the two TAs.

“We decided to conduct the training as one way of empowering communities to identify structural and emerging causes of child labour and find ways of addressing them through advocacy and engagement of duty-bearers,” said Baloyi.

He said knowledge on their right to development would help spur progress and reduce cases of child labour.

“Through the development rights approach, communities will be able to demand social services like schools and other amenities from duty-bearers which is crucial in addressing child labour issues,” said Baloyi.

Dowa District Council director of planning and development Emmanuel Bulukutu commended Winrock International officials for the training, saying it will help communities mainstream child labour issues in their development plans. n