Leaders in Masaka, Kyotera, and Bukomansimbi districts have been challenged to address child labour in the coffee production subsector.
Rashida Nakabuga, the Chief Operations Officer at Rainforest Alliance; an international Non-government Organization fostering partnerships aimed at promoting human rights and livelihoods of farmers, has called upon the local leaders to strictly enforce policies against all forms of child labour in their communities.
Speaking at stakeholders meeting on Wednesday in Masaka, she indicated that while implementing their three-year-long project in the three districts, they observed that a reasonable number of children as young as thirteen years are actively engaged in casual labour in the coffee production sector, hence missing education.
She says that according to their project report findings, 3 out of 10 casual labourers in coffee production sectors are children who are meant to be in school, hence their failure to acquire formal education and other survival skills.
The children are involved in coffee chains, stretching from the farmlands to processing plants, and sometimes in marketing where they are paid peanuts from a portion of the income generated from their work.
Nakabuga says that it is high time the local leadership took up a central role to closely monitor all players in the coffee production and supply chain to ensure that children are not exploited by making them do hard work some of which is even hazardous.
If not addressed urgently, Nakabuga warns that the continued exploitation of children in coffee production and supply chain may cost the country its foreign coffee market in countries under the European Union.
Last month, the European Union Council imposed obligations on companies to address all negative impacts caused by any commercial activities from both an environmental and human rights perspective.
Paul Ggita, a Support Consultant at Rainforest Alliance also observes that their research identified poverty as the major driver of child labour, in addition to the demand for cheap by many coffee farmers and dealers.
He explains that besides discouraging communities against child labour in the coffee production chain, there is also a need to harness interventions geared towards supporting the victims to attain different survival skills by providing them with the required training.
“This project has identified and skilled some of these children, but the underlying demand is big in the communities, hence the need for all stakeholders to join hands towards finding solutions,” he noted.
Fred Nyenje Kayiira, the Bukomansimbi L.CV Chairperson argues that the problem of child labour in their areas was exacerbated by the Covid-19-induced lockdown on schools, which led to high school dropouts.
He however indicates that they are going to team up with the different stakeholders to try and address the factors contributing to child labour.
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