Child labour: ILO, media experts task FG to strengthen collaborating agencies with funds

The International Labour Organizations (ILO), media experts and other stakeholders in the labour sector have tasked the Federal Government to strengthen collaborating agencies that are responsible for the promotion of child Labour issues with enough funds.

While also calling for more and intensified advocacy on child labour, they advised that the efforts should also include enhanced capacity to be able to carry out advocacy duties.

This was the position in a communique issued after a three-day training workshop for media professionals on effective and efficient child labour reporting and presentation of National Social Behavioural Change Communication (SBCC) Strategy for the Elimination of Child Labour in Nigeria (2021-2023).

The training was organized by the International Labour Organisation, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employmeng with the aim of galvinising the Fourth Estate of the Realm to promote behavioural change in matters of child labour.

According to the communique, one of such collaborating agencies to be strengthened is the National Orientation Agency (NOA); while it further emphasized that the management of the NOA also needs to engage more with media practitioners to amplify its messages on relevant government policies relating to child labour.

“Also needed by the NOA is more transparency from other agencies and departments of the government on their projects in order to create common grounds for collaboration on identified issues,” the communique added.

The participants also stressed the need for media to be engaged at the editorial and gatekeeping levels “in order to have their buy ins and make the jobs of reporters easier, thereby placing child labour issues on the front burner of regional, national and local discourse.”

The communique read further: “On their part, journalists must win over and court the professional fancy of their editors, managers, and media gatekeepers in their anti-child labour reporting to ensure their stories and reporting plans are supported at the highest levels.

“Media professionals and their entire newsrooms should not work in silos but collaborate more by following up on the reports published by other media organisations and by forming networks or coalitions to collectively work on particular story ideas. This is besides taking full advantage of social media handles.

“Advocacy groups, such as the NOA should consider the cultural realities and preferences of a people before introducing alien solutions or alternatives to them.

“Advocacy groups should rebroadcast relevant reports from media organisations on their social media and other platforms in further amplifying conversations around child labour.

“Efforts must be made to get government officials to cooperate adequately with journalists, especially when it comes to access to information and should note that response time for media enquiries have to be fast enough to match the quick pace of press work.

“The Ministry of Labour and other relevant stakeholders such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) should share contacts of their response or help desks with journalists as a way of building the communication gap with the media.

“The Ministry of Labour and ILO should facilitate the processes by which media professionals reach out to focal points in the MDAs, law enforcement agencies, civil society and faith based organisations that are relevant to the elimination of child labour in order to aid effective reportage.

“Media professionals should familiarize themselves with, cite and draw strength from sister instruments from other international organisations such as the ECOWAS Regional Action Plan on the Elimination of the worst forms of Child Labour in the fight against the menace.”

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