Accra — The International Cocoa Verification Board (ICVB) has endorsed Ghana's reports on the state of child labour which said there was no evidence of trafficked children and bonded children working on cocoa farms in Ghana.

Earlier in the year, the ICVB unconditionally accepted the results of Ghana's pilot and scaled-up surveys which were carried out in 2006 and 2007 respectively.

This followed a recommendation by the verification team, which the ICVB set up sometime last year.

Mr. Andrews Addoquaye Tagoe, Secretary to the ICVB announced this at the seventh National Programme for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour in Cocoa (NPECLC) partners' forum.

Mr. Addoquaye Tagoe explained that the unconditional acceptance of the reports demonstrated that there was negligible disparity between the facts established in the two reports and the verification report of the ICVB.

Mrs Rita Owusu-Amankwah, National Programme Officer of the NPECLC, said in an interview that the unconditional acceptance means the surveys could be relied upon as giving the true state of child involvement in cocoa production.

About 40 participants attended the forum. They consisted of community based organisations (CBOs), civil society, public sector institutions, development partners, security agencies and the media.

The key findings of the scaled-up study were that cocoa production in Ghana is a smallholder activity with average farm size of 2.4 hectares; There was no evidence of trafficked children and none were found in debt bondage;

The school enrolment rate was 89 percent with an attendance rate of 93 percent; and 54 percent of children could not read and write.

Others were that 35 percent of children worked on cocoa farms with 61 children (6.1 percent) undertaking cocoa activities under high intensity conditions (working for 7 or more hours per day or 4 to 6 hours a day for 6 to 7 days a week); and 47 percent of children had participated in at least one hazardous cocoa production activity during the last cocoa farming season.

The verification team's report said the results of the verification indicated an overall quality of the certification study was regarded as "Average." It said, "This result suggests that the study achieved its objectives, albeit some limitations."

It suggested that for the reported results of the certification study to be representative for the general population under study, appropriate statistical weights have to be applied to the estimates in the study.

Meanwhile, Mr. Emmanuel Akumatey Akuffo, Chief Director of the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare has indicated that this year, 5000 school children in cocoa growing communities are to benefit from free uniforms to lessen the burden on parents.

Besides, the ministry through the NPECLC has also packaged a micro credit facility for parents to increase farm production as well as to undertake alternative livelihood activities such as trading for supplementary funds to support education of their children. Furthermore, the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme will be continued.

By the end of the year, the NPECLC expects to increase its operational districts from eleven to 47. Ten communities will be selected from each district for focus.

Read about Verité's work with the ICVB here.
Read this story at AllAfrica.com here.