The years of Slavery are gone. Those days when some five thousand Ghanaians were shipped each year to the West as slaves to work on plantations are over. But, it is hard to believe, that after a century and half since the abolishment of slavery, a new form of slavery has emerged in our own backyard. And this slavery is child labor or what many people in Ghana refer to as domestic slavery.
Several reasons have been attributed to domestic or household slavery, and one of which is the imbalance economic system between Southern and Northern Ghana. It all started with Colonialism when the British first settled in the Ghana which was the called the Gold Coat. Partly because of the climate and partly because of the transportation, the British settled in Southern Ghana while they manipulate the mineral market and also administer the state of affairs in the region. Settling and Administering also means building infrastructures, both public and private, and also constructing roads around this area and building schools as well. And so what happen was that Southern Ghana was introduced to such things as education and Christianity at the very early stage. The activity of the Europeans or the colonizers also provided jobs to the indigenous people who worked as laborers. This coupled with other things means infrastructural and economic development of the South while the North was completely left behind.
So in modern day Ghana, there is a huge gap between northern and southern Ghana stemming from the activities of the colonial masters. The government of Ghana today has also done a poor job of bridging this gap and the result is domestic enslavement of children especially girls from Northern Ghana to the South. Northern Ghana is still considered “uncivilized”. Compared to Southern Ghana, less attention has been given to the Northern region of Ghana in terms of education, health services, construction of good roads, agricultural extension services and even the media. Worse of all, jobs are very hard to come by in Northern Ghana. Due to lack of education, the birth rate in Northern Ghana is very high. Most families give birth to more children than they could possibly take care of. And so what is happening today in Ghana is either the voluntary movement of people, mostly women from Northern Ghana to the South and particularly the city of Accra in search of jobs. Some of these women sleep on the streets of Accra, exposing them to predators such as rapists and serial killers. They mostly work in the markets as what most Ghanaians refer to as “Kayayo”, which is carrying heavy loads for travelers or heavy goods purchased in the market to the owner’s destination.
Other children, again mostly girls, are given away by their own parents to Southerners simply because they can’t take good care of them. Some Southerners promise to take the girls to school and provide for them adequately in order to convince the parents of these girls. But the reality is, most of this girls are made to work like slaves in the house, beaten anytime they fail to meet expectations, work all day and go t bed late and they are hardly fed adequately. They are also denied the education they were promised. Sometimes these girls are paid monthly, some of which might go to their parents directly from their “madams” or through them. Other children also engage in fishing activities which is very dangerous especially when the kid involve does not know how to swim.
So many children die from drowning during fishing. In areas where service requires working on farms like Cocoa, boys and girls are forced to undertake hazardous task.
“Manual labor and material handling, the use of sharp tools, application of pesticides and lack of personal protective equipment and clothing characterized cocoa production in Western Ghana. Children of all ages participated in cocoa production, but usually adolescence aged 14 years and older who are migrant workers or members of the sharecropper families did the most intensive work” ( L Dianne Mull and Steven Kirkhorn). This child labor has deny these unfortunate children the chance to go to school and to develop themselves and society in the future.
