The Ministry of Social Welfare and Poverty Alleviation as secretariat of the National Coordinating Committee on Children (NCCC) would like to thank ILO-TACKLE project for the release of the Child Labour Fiji findings on a research recently highlighted in the media.
The NCCC is committed to working with counterpart agencies and members of NCCC in implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that Fiji ratified in 1993.
In 2008-2009, the NCCC established a new sub-committee on child labour to look into this area for children in Fiji.
Over the years and in partnership with the ILO-TACKLE project and Ministry of Labour, the child labour sub-committee has had the support of the NCCC in recommending ways to better implement provisions of the CRC.
In particular Article 32, which requires the State recognise the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.
The NCCC is concerned the report may be used insensitively and irresponsibly for interpretation by individuals and organisations that do not take into consideration positive changes and on-going work that has contributed immensely in the prevention of child labour and protective situations for children.
For this reason members of the public are requested to take more interest in looking at these issues and findings to provide the best care for our children.
The NCCC would also like to call on all government ministries and departments to strengthen compliance and regulations to prevent, protect and remove children if and when necessary from situations that would make these children vulnerable.
On the same note the NCCC wants the Ministry of Education to enforce stronger compliance on compulsory education to meet our commitment.
The Ministry of Labour will enforce the Employment Relations Promulgations 2007 to bring those responsible and perpetrators of child labour to task.
The Ministry of Social Welfare, Women and Poverty Alleviation is committed in engaging with relevant inter-agencies for better referral and administrative mechanisms and we hope to work towards this to better manage and monitor cases and push for actions to work with children and families in these vulnerable situations.
-End-