The Alliance For Change (AFC) yesterday described Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir’s suggestion of changing the legislation to facilitate children from the age of 13 working in some jobs as “unbelievable and disgraceful.”
The party yesterday in a release also demanded an explanation from President Bharrat Jagdeo as to whether Nadir’s opinion is one shared by the government, even as it called on all Guyanese to voice their objections “to this latest outrage.”
Signalling its intentions to never support any attempt to change the legislation to lower the age limit for children to commence working, the party said that the laws introduced in 1994 setting the minimum age at 15 “were done with good reason; taking into account international conventions, and the scourge of child labour and exploitation that had started to raise its head in Guyana.”
The party suggested that the ruling PPP/C party push a programme to educate children aged 13, and not one that will see the country’s children going into the fields, factories and offices to work at that tender age.
“What manner of man is the Minister of Labour?” the party asked.
“When we moved our laws to ensure that children who are under the age of 15 years cannot be employed we also created a problem for us,” Nadir had said at a press conference last Wednesday.
According to Nadir, in other jurisdictions children from as young as 12 years old are allowed to work for limited hours in certain jobs and he emphasised that Guyana does not have a problem with child labour.
“I am seriously considering going backwards. I am seriously considering once again revising the legislation with respect to children … to allow children… between the ages of 13 and 15 in Guyana’s case to do light work for a specific period per week,” the minister had said.
The minister recalled that in years gone by the bag bays at supermarkets were manned by children and he said it would be better to have children work for limited hours and not during school hours instead of having an absolute position. The minister pointed out that with the absolute position when the statistics are created there are different numbers being produced.
