RWANDAN CHILDREN PENETRATE UGANDA FOR CAUSUAL EMPLOYMENT

Kabale district authorities are faced with a challenge of averting high influx of Rwandese children who illegally cross into the country to seek employment.

The children aged between seven to fifteen years use porous border points and get employed as casual laborers and domestic workers. Majority of them take care of animals while some work in gardens.

According to authorities in Kabale, over ten children cross to each parish every month to offer cheap labour in various house holds more especially in the Sub Counties of Rubaya, Kamuganguzi, Butanda, Buhara, Maziba, Kamwezi and Katuna town council which lies along Uganda -Rwanda border line.

Kabale distrcit senior probation and social welfare officer; Monica Muhumuza says the trend is worrying especially when it comes to protecting them within the communities hence leaving them at the mercy of whoever they come across .

She said its a big shame that Ugandan community receives and subjects these children to hard labor with minimal pay and this contravenes the law.

Monica Muhumuza appealed to leaders in the country to engage the Ministry of East African affairs  to implore the government of Rwanda to put up measures that will stop  children from leaving their country to Uganda where they don’t come to study but to offer cheap labor and end up inducing Ugandan children to drop out of school to equally do the same work.

Ms Joy Otunga the deputy Mayor Katuna town council said the community is  at the disadvantage whenever they lose a life of a Rwandan child working in the area because it becomes very tricky for anyone to deliver back a dead body and sometimes they have to engage the Rwandan embassy.

Kabale Resident District Commissioner Darious Nandinda said employing young children is criminal and warned those employing them with arrest any time .

But some of the people employing them said Ugandan children do not want to work and this leaves them with no option but to employ Rwandese children who prefer working for very little money.

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