MWAMBE PEMBA: CHILDREN FORCED TO A LIFE OF STONE CRUSHING

 

By HAJI NAASSOR, PEMBA

 

It is about an hour-and-a-quarter drive from Chake Chake town to Mwambe village in Mkoani District in the Southern Region of Pemba Island within Zanzibar country.

 

The village of Mwambe is located in a rocky area but is more fertile than the surrounding villages. It has three shehias, known here as Jombwe, Mwambe and Mchakwe.

 

The village has a population of 17,525,(2012 census) half of them children. Its people survive on agriculture growing beans for local consumption, and citrus and bananas to sell.

 

It has its own primary and secondary schools and a health centre that provides various medical services.

 

Besides, agriculture, the villagers are also engaged in fishing, stone crashing and mining. Since Mwambe is rocky, most people, especially the elderly and children, are involved in quarrying stone for sale.

 

The stone crashing business has forced many children to abandon school to earn money but this is taking its toll on their health.

Efforts by the government and international organizations to discourage this activity have so far been unsuccessful.

 

Zanzibar, as part of the United Republic of Tanzania, ratified various international conventions and treaties such as the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.

 

It endorsed the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child adopted by the African Union in 1990, which prohibits child labor and is a signatory of the International Labor Organization Convention 182 of 1999 which calls for the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor including slavery, sale or trafficking of children, forced labor, sexual exploitation, drug trafficking and any hazardous work that can affect their health and safety.

 

Zanzibar passed its own youth development policy in 2005 to protect children but in Mwambe they continue to work under very difficult conditions.

 

This is in contradiction to the child Act no 6, of 2011 which prohibits any person or company from employing or engaging children in any activity that threatens the child’s health, education, mind, body and morality.

 

On my trip to the quarrying area, I found children under the age of 17 crashing stones which were sold to traders and are used for construction of residential and business properties.

Some of these children were students at Almadrasatul Rahman Islamic School. A teacher at this school, Kassim Ali, confirmed that the children were students at the school but they did the work to raise money to develop the school.

 

He said the children worked only on Sundays, because they were supposed to rest and did not go to school. Once they filled a truck load, they sold it for Tsh100, 000 which they used to develop the school.

 

The teacher admitted that the work affected the children’s health due to dust and sometimes they got hurt when they cut their hands while crashing the stones.

 

The Zanzibar Education Policy of 2006 forbids students from doing any work at weekends. It says they should go to school from Monday to Friday and rest on Saturday and Sunday or only engage in recreational activities that enhance their lives as children.

 

One of the children, Fatima Haji, 12, confirmed they worked to raise money to develop their school.

 

“Parents are reluctant to contribute to the development of our school, so to ensure that our school grows we have to look for money and the easiest way is to crash stones because there is a ready market,” she said.

But the job was not only affecting their education, it was also affecting their health as some ended up with respiratory or eye problems.

 

It was, however, not only the students from the school that were at this site. There were also children who were crashing stones without the knowledge of their parents or teachers.

 

Khamis Makame,13 had come with his younger brother and his elder brother who is 18.

 

By 13:20 when I got there, they had already filled three buckets and were working on the fourth.

 

Khamis’s hand was full of cuts and bruises and the skin of his palm had hardened like that of someone who consistently does hard and tortuous manual labour.

 

Khamis said they worked every day after school except on Friday.

 

 

Adam Kassim Ali, also 13, said he now had an eye problem after a piece of stone entered into his eye while he was crashing stone. He said this work was dangerous because sometimes he cut his fingers while crashing stone or pieces of broken stone entered into his eyes.

 

Ali Makame, 15, a Form One student, resident of Kinundu, said he had to crash stone to earn money to help his family.

 

“Life is very tough for my father and mother. My father is now old and poor to fend for the family, so I have to do this work to get some money to help my parents.

 

If I don’t crash these stones where will I get the money to help him?” he asked.

 

Juma Kombo,17, a resident of Kibondeni, said sometimes he had to skip school to crash stones to get money for fees and also to buy clothes.

 

But the job of crashing stones was not only for boys. Maryam Simai,14, said she crashed stones and filled one or two buckets a day and earned Ts 5 000 which she used to pay her fees and gave some to her mother.

 

Vuai Kheri Vuai, 67, from Bwegeza village, said crashing stones had many adverse effects on children such as eye and respiratory problems but it was very difficult to stop them because of poverty.

“These children go to school but their minds are always on crashing stones, and sometimes you find them crashing stones as late at 7pm,” he said.

 

Mboje Faki Juma 52, said she had prohibited his children from doing that work but it was difficult to control them.

NassorMbaroukSaidi 47, a resident of Mbuyuni, said besides crashing stones, a lot of children were also engaged in preparing and selling fish on the streets.

 

A child welfare and protection officer in Mkoani District, Aisha Abdi Juma, said most of the children were forced to work because of poverty and a breakdown of their families.

 

“After the parents separate, the family breaks down. This leads children to work to fend for themselves because they need to survive even though the work is dangerous,” she said.

 

“When a child sees that the family has become poor, the child decides to find a job to do like crashing stones or preparing fish for sale unlike those on the mainland Tanzania who become street kids.

 

“I have seen a seven-year-old girl from Shamiani Mwambe crashing stone. She had cuts on her hands. When I asked her why she was doing this, she said she wanted money to help her grandmother.”

Zanzibar Labour Commission officer Sarah Ali Abdalla said one of the problems was that the 2011 Child Act does not prohibit a child under 18 years from working, it says the work should not affect the child’s right to education and health.

 

Jombwe local leader (sheha), Hakim Khamis Omar, admitted that some children involved in crashing stones did not go to school.

 

His counterpart at Mwambe, Hamadi Haji Faki, said the main problem that forced children to work was poverty.

 

Labour Commission for the Zanzibar Labour Commission, Fatma Iddi Ali, said the government and its development partners were doing everything they could to stop child labour but the problem persisted.

 

She said the government was providing education and financial support to vulnerable groups through the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) so that children could return to school, but although this had provided some relief, children in some villages like Mwambe continued to crash stones.

 

Mwambe Health Centre Chief, Shufaa Mohamed Ali, said crashing stones caused many health problems for children, such as chronic illness and respiratory problems.

“Most of the children brought here have chest or eye problems because of the dust while doing their work,” she said.

 

Mwambe Primary School headmaster, Shaibu Othman Sagafu, conceded that most of the pupils were involved in crashing stones but he said they did this after school, but some dodged school to do the work.

 

He said they had implemented several measures to stop this problem including educating parents on the benefits of educating their children.

 

Mkoani Town Council Director, Yussuf Kaiza Makame, said they were implementing several strategies to address this problem including cooperating with the Ministry responsible for children and parents to show the adverse effects of this business on children.

 

“This problem has existed for a very long time so it is difficult to get rid of it in one day. But we are collaborating with the ministry and parents to educate them on the impact of child labour,” he said.

 

Ali Issa Shehe, 32, argued that stone crashing was part of their culture so it will not be easy for the government to control it because citizens themselves had to change first.

“We can only succeed if we introduce community police to stop children from going into stone quarrying areas,” he said.

 

Makame Mussa,40, agreed. He said the problem will only be eradicated when the community agrees to change and stops using their children to fulfill their own selfish interests.

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