TANZANIA: WE must agree that child domestic work is one of the most widespread and exploitative forms of child labour in the world today and is also one of the most difficult problems to tackle.
With this in mind, it is time for stakeholders to fully join the government in fighting all sorts of child domestic workers, who happen to be girls by over 80 per cent.
The media day in day out has been awash with cases, where such children are violently abused, some to the extent of being sexually molested and hidden from sight in their employers’ homes.
This is a global problem that must be addressed collectively by the governments and stakeholders so that ugly cases, which keep on repeating, are eliminated.
As the crime escalates, child abduction or child theft that is the unauthorised removal of a minor (a child under the age of legal adulthood) from the custody of the child’s natural parents or legally appointed guardians is rearing an ugly face in the country and must come to a total halt.
In this case, the term child abduction includes two legal and social categories which differ by their perpetrating contexts: abduction by members of the child’s family or abduction by strangers.
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Here, occurring around parental separation or divorce, such parental or familial child abduction may include parental alienation, a form of child abuse seeking to disconnect a child from targeted parent and denigrated side of family.
This is, by far, the most common form of child abduction that is of late surfacing in the country.
In a related case, abduction or kidnapping by strangers (by people unknown to the child and outside the child’s family) is rare, but seems to be gaining ground and must be stopped.
Some of the reasons why a stranger might kidnap an unknown child include extortion to elicit a ransom from the parents for the child’s return, illegal adoption-where a stranger steals a child with the intent to rear the child as their own or to sell to a prospective adoptive parent.
This also includes human trafficking-stealing a child with the intent to exploit the child themselves or through trade to someone who will abuse the child through slavery, forced labour, or sexual abuse.
As the list elongates, we must say no to any form of child domestic workers and above all – the act of some people (read agents), ferrying girls from upcountry at a fee to willing employers in urban areas, without these workers fully being traced and known.
It will not help when we keep on lamenting against poverty and hardship in rural areas as force compelling children to migrate to cities to find jobs in private households.
We must address these! As this is being tackled by all stakeholders teaming up with the government, it is recommended that, economic empowerment should be done to the poor families right into the grassroots including raising of public awareness on the negative consequences of child domestic labour and withdrawal of child domestic workers, especially by providing them with education and vocational training so that their economic bases are raised.
