Socio-Economic factors for the prevalence of child labour in Singida Municipality

Abstract

Child labour is one of the major socio-economic issues in the global world. Children have historically been a part of the labour force, especially with advent of industrialization. There are considerable efforts by the ILO for addressing this issue. Tanzania also has been concerned with this situation by ratifying ILO conventions pertaining to children and young people. Primary data were collected through face to-face interviews, observations and self-administered questionnaires. Fifty children and 30 key informants were interviewed, a Cross-sectional and descriptive design were applied; respondent were selected from two bus stands in the Municipality. Snow balling method used to ensure the possibility of getting necessary information. Also purposive sampling was used to collect information from key informants. The study revealed that, majority of children engage in child labour live with their parents and participate in business because they have been sent by their parents. Most of them come from poor families who are small scale farmers. They also come from families with low education level of which they do not see the significance of education to their children. Children run small business because of household poverty, lack of parental care and illiteracy. There are efforts done by different actors to abolish child labour but there some challenges they face like lack of cooperation, lack of awareness and commitment of parents. Therefore parents, Government and Other stakeholders should work together and understand child's right and responsibilities to the children.