Ghana Labour Law Pdf
Ghana chapter to Employment & Labour Law does not exist. Click here to view other titles featuring Ghana If you wish to enquire as to whether this country chapter is available in a previous edition of Employment & Labour Law in print or PDF format, contact us here. Act 651 has been described as a consensus document because it is a negotiated law where there was a lot of give and take by the Social Partners in labour relations. The Social Partners are composed of two representatives each from Government, Organized Labour and the Ghana Employers Association.
Children in Ghana engage in the worst forms of child labor, including in fishing and cocoa harvesting, sometimes as a result of human trafficking. (1-5) Table 1 provides key indicators on children’s work and education in Ghana.
Table 1. Statistics on Children’s Work and Education | ||
Children | Age | Percent |
Working (% and population) | 5 to 14 | 24.7 (1,721,914) |
Working children by sector | 5 to 14 | |
Agriculture | 78.7 | |
Industry | 3.7 | |
Services | 17.6 | |
Attending School (%) | 5 to 14 | 91.7 |
Combining Work and School (%) | 7 to 14 | 25.3 |
Primary Completion Rate (%) | 93.8 | |
Source for primary completion rate: Data from 2018, published by UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019. (6)
Source for all other data: International Labor Organization's analysis of statistics from Living Standard Survey, Round 6, 2012–2013. (7)
Based on a review of available information, Table 2 provides an overview of children's work by sector and activity.
Table 2. Overview of Children’s Work by Sector and Activity | |
Sector/Industry | Activity |
Agriculture | Producing cocoa,† including land clearing, using machetes and cutlasses for weeding, collecting cocoa pods with a harvesting hook, breaking cocoa pods, working in the vicinity of pesticide spraying, and carrying heavy loads† of water (2,5,8-14) |
Production of palm oil† and cotton, including weeding, harvesting, and acting as scarecrows (11,14,15) | |
Herding livestock, including cattle,† hunting, and work in slaughterhouses (14,16,17) | |
Fishing,† including for tilapia; preparing bait, nets, and fishing gear; launching, paddling, and draining canoes; diving for fish; casting and pulling fishing nets and untangling them underwater; sorting, picking, cleaning, smoking, transporting, and selling fish; cleaning and repairing nets; and building and repairing boats (1-3,8,10,12,14,15,18-21) | |
Industry | Quarrying† and small-scale mining,† sometimes for gold, including using mercury, digging in deep pits, crushing rocks by hand, carrying heavy loads,† and operating machinery† (2,4,11,12,18,22-25) How to mod banished. |
Manufacturing and working in sawmills† (4,11) | |
Construction and bricklaying or carrying brick (14,16) | |
Services | Domestic work† (9,13,14,18) |
Transporting heavy loads as kayayei† (3,8,14,18,26,27,28) | |
Work in transportation,† activities unknown (4) | |
Electronic waste and garbage scavenging,† including sorting scavenged items† and transporting items for sale† (29-32) | |
Street work,† including begging,† small-scale vending, and working at restaurants or bars† (4,11,14,33) | |
Categorical Worst Forms of Child Labor‡ | Commercial sexual exploitation, sometimes as a result of human trafficking (8,13,17,18,34-36) Windows datastore edb. Edb file locationThe Windows. |
Forced labor in begging; agriculture, including herding; fishing, including for tilapia; artisanal gold mining; domestic work; and street work, including vending and carrying heavy loads, each sometimes as a result of human trafficking (1,3,14,17,19,20,37-39) | |
Forced ritual servitude for girls known as trokosi, including in domestic work for priests (3,12,14,18,27,34,36,39,40) | |
† Determined by national law or regulation as hazardous and, as such, relevant to Article 3(d) of ILO C. 182.
‡ Child labor understood as the worst forms of child labor per seunder Article 3(a)–(c) of ILO C. 182.
The majority of children subject to human trafficking are transported within Ghana for labor in cocoa, domestic work, commercial sexual exploitation, gold mining, and fishing. Children as young as age 4 are subjected to forced labor in fishing in the areas around Lake Volta, sometimes as a result of human trafficking. (17,20,24,27,34,38,39) In December 2018, 42 children between the ages of 5 and 16 who had been transported from Central and Greater Accra were rescued from labor exploitation on Lake Volta. (41,42) During the reporting period, the government identified 22 children who were victims of sex trafficking. (8) Children also use sharp tools and are exposed to agro-chemicals while working in the cocoa sector. (5,11) In addition, girls as young as 13 years of age from rural northern regions of Ghana travel to urban centers to work as kayayei carrying heavy loads on their heads in markets, and are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation. (28)
Ghana Labour Law Act 651 Pdf
According to the Constitution and the Education Act, primary education in Ghana is free and compulsory from kindergarten through junior high school. (43,44) However, in practice, children must pay for school uniforms, fees, and materials, which may be prohibitive for many families. (1,3,9,12,24,29,36,45,46,47) In addition, factors such as a shortage of classrooms, long distance to schools, absence of sanitation facilities, overcrowding in urban areas, sexual harassment of girls in schools, physical violence, verbal abuse, and poor educational infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, severely limit access to education for many children. (1,9,12,14,24,36,45,47) In response, the government has made efforts to increase the accessibility of public education, including by building schools to reduce the distance students must travel, providing school uniforms, lifting birth registration requirements for enrollment, and extending free education through high school. (48,47) Although uniforms and birth certificates are required for admittance into free public school, in practice students are not denied admission if they do not have uniforms or birth certificates. (49) The extension of free senior high school throughout the country has resulted in an influx of students and overcrowded schools. To address this issue, in 2018, the government introduced a dual-track system whereby students, typically between the ages of 13 and 17, may attend school in alternating semesters and take advantage of opportunities such as vocational training when they are not in school. (8,49) However, reports suggest that such opportunities are often not readily available. As a result, these children are vulnerable to recruitment into child labor. (8) The government operates 14 national schools for deaf and blind students. (47)