Not many people know that enlisting child labour is a crime that attracts a one-year jail term or heavy fine. Most child labourers are made to toil for hours in the hot sun, many of them on empty stomachs.
The meagre earnings most of these children make always go to their masters, parents or guardians. The number of destitute children who struggle to make a living through the worst forms of labour in Tanzania is shocking.
A Child Labour Survey made in 2001 indicated that 1.5 million children were engaged in illegal labour in urban centres. Those who toiled for a living in rural areas were not counted.
Recent figures are hard to come by but head count must have soared over the years to more than three million.
A Member of Parliament, Mr Salim Khalfan (Tumbe - CUF), told the National Assembly a few years ago that more and more children were being engaged in dangerous forms of labour.
He said that the situation was more critical rural Tanzania where children slogged it out for a living in commercial agriculture, mining pits and as domestic helps in homes. Mr Khalfan said underage girls try their luck even in prostitution. He was concerned that not much was being done to rescue them.
"You would think they don't have parents at all; or that there was no government agency to protect them," he lamented. It is not uncommon to see school-age children slogging it out for a living as hawkers in the mean streets. This may not be a bad form of labour but children should be in schools.
Failure to protect children from any form of strenuous labour amounts to child abuse. Some parents defend this situation saying: "The children are acquainting themselves with the rudiments of earning a living.
They must work alongside parents or own their own so they develop the talents, mental capabilities and physical abilities to their fullest potential."
So, you find in towns under- age quarry stone crackers, shoe-shine boys, fitters, cart pushers, sand miners, prostitutes, domestic hands, farm helps and even factory labourers.
In rural areas you find land tillers, cattle minders, cutters of hut construction poles, firewood collectors and even grave diggers. The list is virtually impossible to close.
Socially disadvantaged children have been seen working in fishing vessels on the high seas. Welfare officers say exploitation of child labour has become so commonplace in Tanzania that the average person no longer sees it as a serious offence.
A social welfare worker, who wished to remain anonymous, says working children often make do with the crumbs that remain on their masters' tables. "This is arrant exploitation.
It is cruelty ruthlessly meted out on hapless children." The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child says in Article 11 that: "Every child shall have the right to education." It adds that: "The education of the child shall be directed to the promotion and development of personality."
The Charter, to which Tanzania is a signatory, insists that: Such education should also promote the child's talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential." It should also be directed at "preparing the child for responsible life in a free society."
In many cases these toiling children do not go to school. Some may have dropped out of school due to financial constraints. When they fall sick, as they so often do because of their poor living conditions, they have to fend for themselves usually by seeking minimum medication, the welfare workers says.
"Hardly do they have the means to seek proper medical treatment with the attendant laboratory tests to ascertain what is really wrong with them.
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