Children march in Kawangware, Nairobi, during celebrations marking the Day of the African Child. Photo/MICHAEL MUTE
Kenya faces more hostile tea and coffee export markets following a US report that names it among 58 countries which use children in the production of goods meant for sale overseas.
The report says Kenya exploits children to produce its world-renowned tea and coffee in violation of international labour laws that prohibit use of child labour or forced manual work.
Miraa (a stimulant plant), rice, sisal, sugar cane and tobacco are also produced through children’s toil, says the survey by the US labour office, which does not mention the multinationals that profit from the products, only saying its intention is to inform Americans that the items are produced through the exploitation and abuse of children.
But the Kenya government and multinationals involved in the sectors rejected the claims with Labour permanent secretary, Beatrice Kituyi, saying the State had reduced instances of children working for profit or family gain in farms.
“The multi-national enterprises do not engage children in their undertakings and this has been continuously monitored by the inspectorate staff of the Ministry. Employment of children is found in the informal and agricultural sectors where children are monitored by their parents as they accompany them to work,” she says.
Figures from the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey says one million children aged between five and 17 years were in 2006 engaged in work-for-profit compared to 1.9 million in 1999.
Child labour coupled with environment conservation have lately attracted global attention with children rights activists and environment lobbyists campaigning for boycott of goods deemed to have been produced through undue exploitation of the two resources.
BAT Kenya head of corporate and regulatory Affairs Julie Adell-Owino says the company has contracted specific suppliers who work under special guidelines which include the non-use of children in tobacco fields.
“We have contracted 5,000 tobacco farmers in Nyanza and we have given them a strict code of ethics against child labour. We insist that children of tobacco farmers must attend schools,” she says.
The programme coordinator for Action Aid Kenya, a non governmental organisation, Mr Lucas Chacha, says tobacco farming has done more harm than good to residents in Kuria district since it fetches little money for farmers although it is labour intensive and exposes children to health problems.
The report by the Bureau of International Labour Affairs could hurt Kenya — the world’s biggest black tea exporter at a time that global demand for tea is looking up and volumes are projected to rise with the onset of the short rains.
Kenyan tea prices jumped to a new record high at last week’s auction on renewed demand with the average price for Best BP1s leaping to $5.02 per kg from the previous week’s record of $4.47 per kg and another high of $4.31 per kg at the previous sale.
Kenya exports most of its black tea to Middle East markets which are viewed as more accommodating with regard to the ethical label.
Despite output thinning by 11.6 per cent in volume compared to the same period last year, earnings from tea exports rose 13 per cent to Sh43.1 billion.
The Kenya Tea Board has projected overall earnings for 2009 to increase to Sh66 billion as buyers stock up over fears that drought will cut production.
Players in the local tea industry have forecast high prices for Kenyan tea as buyers move to plug a 100 million kilogramme deficit globally.
The coffee sector is grappling with organisational challenges and a steady onslaught from the specialty coffee fad under which child labour is a key factor in attracting the more sensitive European and American markets.
The Nairobi Coffee Exchange reported that Kenya’s average coffee price rose an average 4.4 per cent in September Auctions—which saw a decline in the supplies of the beans amid strong demand.
The crop sold at an average $178.17 for a 50-kilogramme (110-pound) bag, up from $170.58 traded in August.
The Coffee Board said in early October that the crop earned Kenya Sh10.7 billion in the 2008-2009 trading period up from Sh9.7 billion in the previous period.
Ethiopia on Wednesday announced plans to move the trade in its specialty coffee to an Addis Ababa-based commodities exchange instead of the current channel of selling at auctions overseas.
Mr Eleni Gebre-Madhin, the chief executive at the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), said up to 30 per cent of the country’s produce is classified as specialty beans but that higher prices for the fine coffees were not trickling down to farmers.
Ethiopia, Africa’s biggest producer with an annual average output of 330,000 tonnes, has opened talks with key players in the global specialty coffee industry on how best to handle the trading of premium brands.
It expects a bumper harvest of between 20 and 30 per cent above the usual crop this year.
Ethiopian advantage
The child labour cloud hanging over Kenya’s produce could swing to Ethiopia’s advantage in securing the emerging market.
“As a nation and as a member of the global community, we reject the proposition that it is acceptable to pursue economic gain through the forced labour of other human beings or the exploitation of children in the work place” says US secretary of Labour Hilda Solis.
Even though Kenya has put in place a process to curtail child labour including ratifying Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour in 2001 and Convention 138 on the Employment of Children in 1973, the problem persists in farms across the country.
The Economic Survey 2009 says: “Results confirm that there exists a large number of children working in various sectors of the Kenyan economy instead of pursuing activities that would yield long-term benefits to the individual child and the nation at large. Agriculture and fisheries remain the dominant employer of children.”
Sugar cane growers in Nyanza say the use of children to till or harvest sugar cane farms is common.
“There is nothing to hide, child labour is rampant in the sugar cane plantations in Nyanza, you can see it as you walk around. The use of children in Miwani plantations is too high. I’ve just passed through the farms now, it’s a holiday today (yesterday) but I’ve seen people working in the farms and they are all children” says Mr Samuel Anyango, the secretary general of East Africa Sugarcane growers Forum.
He says poverty makes children work in the farms for profit.
“The government must find a way of keeping children in schools. The free education is not as free, parents are asked to pay certain levies and they don’t have the money for it.”
Education officials in Migori and Kuria districts say about 38 per cent of school-going children from Kuria and 18 per cent in Migori have dropped out of school to work in tobacco farms and gold mines.
BAT, Kenya, which buys tobacco from parts of Nyanza province faces a tough challenge since the US report indicates child labour is involved in the production of tobacco.
Jim Onyango-BUSINESS DAILY
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