Poverty and child labour among slum dwellers in Nakulabye parish, Kampala district.

Abstract

This document is a research report about the relationship between poverty and child labour amongst slum dwellers in Nakulabye Parish, Kampala district. It has lately been perceived that there are many children in Nakulabye who work for survival. The study was guided by the following objectives; to establish how Prevalence of poverty perpetuates to child labour in Nakulabye, to assess what has been done at micro, meso, macro and global level in order to eliminate child labour, to evaluate the weaknesses of various interventions and policies against child labour and ascertain why they have failed to eliminate child labour and to reveal the kind of activities urban children especially those in slums engage in and how do these affect them physically, mentally, socially and emotionally. The study was done using a qualitative study design and a purposive sampling procedure. Nakulabye parish leaders were selected as key informants (respondents) in the study and these were interviewed using an interview guide and this data was analyzed and presented using simple statistics. It was found out that, for the causes of child labour, poverty at 91% was found out as the leading cause of child labour among Nakuabye slum dwellers, 72% respondents did not know about any interventions since the designers, planners and implementers of these interventions do not involve the beneficiaries at all levels, all the respondents in the study agreed together that there are many weaknesses in these interventions at 100% and the major activities that children are involved in to make money and earn a living are begging on streets (29%), collecting and selling both metallic and plastic scrap (34%), all other forms of activities which children do to get money (19%)and pottering and vending vegetables and other food stuffs( 9%). However, the study recommends the government to; channel interest free loans to village SAACOs, problem analysis should be done before any intervention is implemented, UPE and USE should be effectively implemented and community engagement considered by project managers, planners and implementers at all levels.