The Zimbabwean caught up with pupils from Siyalima primary school who said they were walking close to seven kilometers to fetch water from a local community dam.
“As you can see we are busy fetching water with buckets for gardening from a dam which is about seven kilometers from our school. We fetch the water even for our teachers because our borehole at school has dried up,” said one of the pupils.
A teacher in charge at the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their borehole always runs dry towards the rainy season. “We have no choice except to ask school children to fetch water for us during general work time, which is when most of them are fetching water for school gardening purposes,” said the teacher.
Parents said they saw no problem in their children fetching water for the teachers, saying they appreciated the endurance by the teachers who persevered under unfavourable working conditions.
“We see nothing wrong with our children helping teachers fetch water, rather we are grateful that the same teachers have endured these tough working conditions,” said Louis Chambari. Other villagers said the children did piece jobs for their teachers to raise school fees and food handouts from their teachers.
According to a 2010 UN Children’s Fund report, 13 percent of Zimbabwean children are engaged in child labour, which the International Labour Organization defines as work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally harmful to children and that interferes with their schooling.
In Harare, the figure is closer to 20 percent, according to Pascal Masocha, national coordinator of the Coalition against Child Labour in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s Labour Act prohibits employers from hiring a person under 18 to perform hazardous work and the Children’s Act makes it an offence to exploit children through employment. However, a 2011 US Department of Labour report on the worst forms of child labour found that these laws were poorly enforced by inspectors who had no special training or resources to address the issue.
Post published in: News