ILO targets both women's income and child labour

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), along with the government of Tanzania and Akiba Commercial Bank, has launched a project to help tackle the problem of child labour in the country by boosting women's income-earning potential. The UN-associated agency signed an agreement with the government and Akiba to establish a revolving loan fund, financed by the Dutch government, to provide credit to participating women's income-generation groups. A sum of US $200,000 will be deposited at Akiba Commercial Bank as a Cash Guarantee Fund for improving women's economic activities. The broad objective is to reduce the use of child labour in Tanzania - where the practice is widespread, in common with many African countries - through the promotion of women's employment, according to the ILO. The project will involve poor working mothers in selected sectors and locations receiving loans as part of a package designed to allow women make best use of the loans for productive activities. [see http://www.unic.undp.org/labour.htm] According to the ILO Director for East Africa, Ali Ibrahim, the project is a response to the ILO's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which calls for both the elimination of child labour and of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. "It is also aimed at enhancing the government's efforts to fight poverty, and promotion of gender equality as stipulated in the National Poverty Eradication Strategy and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper," he said. The particular rationale for the project is that some forms of women's employment in Tanzania involve the use of child labour due to low income and poor working conditions, according to Ibrahim. Similarly, women's work outside the home generally involves a transfer of domestic chores to a daughter, who may have to leave school to take care of younger siblings and the home. "Enhancing the socioeconomic empowerment of poor groups, a majority of whom are women, is critical for fighting poverty, un/underemployment and marginalisation," Ibrahim said, especially given that women, especially those belonging to poor households, have borne the burnt of the social costs of structural adjustments in the economy. The promotion of gender equality - including girls' enrolment in school - is crucial to Tanzania's efforts to halve extreme poverty by 2010, according to Rose Lugembe, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Labour, Youth Development and Sports. High unemployment among women - coupled with low education, lack of skills and less access to and control of productive resources - has rendered women powerless and helpless, forcing them to enter into precarious types of employment including casual, piece rate work or part-time jobs, she said. "Women who cannot meet their family needs are forced to send their own children to work in order to supplement family income," Lugembe added. "We must specifically address the issue of feminised poverty, and resources must be allocated to ensure women's survival, options and opportunities." Women in the informal sector perform tedious and time-consuming activities, which are characterised by low pay, and being of an unskilled or semiskilled nature, according to Lugembe. And those activities are performed in addition to child bearing and rearing, cooking, fetching water and firewood, caring for sick members of family and other traditional roles. The primary beneficiaries of the new project are intended to be poor working mothers and their children in selected sectors and communities. The focus is on poor women working, female heads of households in commercial agriculture and the informal sector - including stone crushing; food vending; vegetable, banana and sugar cane growing; commercial sex workers and domestic workers. Poor working mothers are expected to benefit through improved working and living conditions, more productive and better-paid work, easier access to credit, and increased awareness of their own rights and the rights of their children, among other areas. In addition, the project is expected to benefit their children - especially girls - by improving their opportunities for physical, emotional, intellectual and social development; rendering them less vulnerable to trafficking and serious forms of labour exploitation; and improving their education and health prospects. Decent work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity, is both about the individual's job and future prospects, according to the ILO. And that includes their ability "to earn enough to feed, clothe and educate children and give them a childhood rather than put them into labour." Lugembe also highlighted the fact that women are biologically, economically and culturally more vulnerable to contracting the HIV/AIDS virus, and the need to give them the right and power to refuse unwanted and unprotected sex and be heeded. "In order for harassment and other forms of violence to cease being a daily reality for women, we must work towards more equal power relations between women and men," she added.