Global Policy Forum

Hobbs Gama

With pupils limping to school on empty stomachs and dressed in tatters, Malawi may not realise her ambition to increase the number of citizens who are able to read and write. Experts have always pointed at poverty as the main reason for escalating rate of school drop outs. Many of the children are absorbed in the child labour market to help their poor families earn additional incomes finance basic requirements.

The situation is a desperate reality of poverty. There are many pupils going to school on empty stomachs and dressed in tatters. Considering such widespread helplessness, the future may not be bright for Malawi's literacy programmes. The admnistration of President Bakili Muluzi launched the donor funded free primary school education programme but hunger and poverty are frustrating the war against illiteracy.

The southern African country which is one of the hardest hunger hit in the region alongside Zambia, Mozambique and Swaziland, has up to 70 percent of its population suffering acute hunger due to poor harvest the past few years. Malawi, which is importing maize from neighbouring countries, has a 600,000 metric tonnes food shortfall at a time when aid agencies estimate that 65 percent of the 12 million population live below the poverty line. Life expectancy has since dropped to 43 years.

Out of a total 1.2 million pupils who registered for grade one at the onset of the free primary education, only 300,000 have made it to grade eight, the last class at primary (elementary) school while the rest have dropped out. This was the sad revelation made recently by the Ministry of Education to UNICEF executive director, Carol Bellamy who visited Malawi.

The director for basic education in the Ministry of Education, Joseph Matola told the global child welfare body that government attributed the alarming dropout rate to, to among other things, lack of classrooms, desks, poor quality of teachers, the HIV/AIDS scourge and the onset of the hunger crisis. "Most of the children come to school without food, they have no clothes and most of them have ended up selling commodities on the streets and some may even have commercial sex workers," complained Matola.

He said this at Ndirande township, in the highly-populated country's commercial city of Blantyre. Ndirande Hill Primary School has only 20 classrooms while a 100 classes take place in the open. The school has 2,600 orphans.

Bellamy, while assuring her organisation's support in such areas as providing of learning materials, maintenance of school structures and teacher training, said UNICEF is already undertaking supplementary and therapeutic feeding for the most under nourished children. The initiatives seeks to keep children in school. "It would be a shame for Malawi to fall back in terms of the work already done where more children were going to school. We think if you lose a generation from school you won't have the kind of future leaders you need in the country," said Bellamy.

Experts have always pointed at poverty as the main reason for escalating rate of drop outs. Many of the children are forced into child labour to help their poor families earn supplementary incomes for food. Orphans, children from women-headed homes and destitutes fall easy pray to child labour. The government of Malawi has since embarked moves to enact favourable legislation to eliminate the exploitation of children in homes, tea and tobacco estates and all other work places.

Tobacco growing countries are up in arms to fight the lobby which they deem threatens the future of their tobacco dependent economies. As for Malawi, 75 percent of foreign exchange earnings come from tobacco exports. Lately, there have been mounting collaboration to check the evil which retards children's development.

There are, of course, additional efforts. Four tobacco exporting companies in the country - African Leaf, Limbe Leaf, Dimon and Stancom Tobacco - have teamed up to eliminate child labour in the tobacco growing districts through a programme called Tobacco Exporters Children Service TECS introduced last July.

Funded by the Geneva-based organisation, the Elimination of Child Labour in Tobacco ECLT, the project will run for four years covering 60 villages in two target districts of Kasungu and Dowa, central Malawi. A survey by the four organisations revealed the problem of child exploitation was serious in the districts.

TECS project manager Limbani Kakhome says they intend to combat child labour through four interventions - the provision of quality education, food security, safe water and health to children. The four components are to be implemented by four non-governmental organisations. Creative Centre for Community Mobilisation (Crecom) will be responsible for education, Livingstonia and Nkhoma Synods of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) church will carry out the safe water component while Total Care will take care of food security.

"Once children have adequate food, travel short distances to school, have access to safe water source and hospital, child labour will be combated," enthused Kakhome adding that a recent survey carried by organisations involved showed that child labour was mainly caused directly or indirectly by by the four components covered in the project.

Child labour is rampant because most children drop out of school due to shortage of food, because they are assigned to draw water from distant sources or because of inadequate health facilities. Western countries, especially the Nordic region, have been lobbying their governments to ban Malawi's tobacco exports to Western markets unless the problem of child labour was tackled. This stand was supported by the International Labour Organisation ILO to impose sanctions on products of countries that exploit child labour to produce them.

There is more action. The World Health Organisation WHO is also pushing for a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control FCTC which seeks to ban tobacco growing and advertising.

Tobacco growing countries are up in arms to fight the lobby which they deem threatens the future of their tobacco dependent economies. As for Malawi, 75 percent of foreign exchange earnings come from tobacco exports.

Lately, there have been mounting collaboration to check the evil which retards children's development. Observers say although it is a tough undertaking, Africa and the developing world is reminded, despite widespread poverty to consider the future of the defenceless children.

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