It’s a dangerous profession, but Dinnes Whispah, a fisherman who maintains he doesn’t employ children, also says, “Going to the lake at a young age is like going to school and learning a trade… the figures have been reducing in the past two years, but you can still find some children coming to the lake on their own for profit.”
But MacBain Mkandawire, executive director of Youth Net and Counselling (Yoneco), says young Adam is just one of thousands being employed in Lake Chilwa’s fishing industry.
Yoneco is the on-the-ground monitor for the United Nations (UN) Right to Development Programme in the area. The Malawian child rights organisation is tasked with training community-based educators and village rights committees – an initiative that aims to inform locals of practices that are infringing on their human rights.
The same format for child labour monitoring has been implemented in Tanzania by International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), and highlighted as good practice in a May 2010 report.
“Child labour is impinging on the right to development,” he says. “By not making children go to school, we are perpetuating poverty.”
He says while groups such as his are making piecemeal progress, poverty affecting Malawi’s largely rural population (84.7% of the country’s 13.1 million people) remains education’s main barrier and child labour’s biggest determinant.
A Plan International report, “Hard Work, Long Hours and Little Pay” found Malawi represents the highest incidence of child labour in southern Africa, with 88.9% of children between the ages of five and 14 working in its agricultural sector.
Children’s work ranges from helping out on a family plot after school to full time employment on tobacco plantations. Gender Links
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