“We can’t do it alone; we’re part­ner­ing with oth­er agen­cies; we have im­ple­ment­ed a na­tion­al steer­ing com­mit­tee; we’re de­vel­op­ing a child reg­istry and a na­tion­al pol­i­cy; we’re con­duct­ing ex­ten­sive aware­ness cam­paigns and train­ing teams to work with schools and com­mu­ni­ties.”

“How about part­ner­ing with vil­lage coun­cils and grass­roots or­gan­i­sa­tions,” Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis asked, ea­ger to learn more about an in­te­grat­ed pro­gramme to reach at-risk chil­dren.  

Those were snip­pets from the April 5 Par­lia­ment Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) meet­ing con­vened to ex­am­ine the preva­lence of child labour, fac­tors per­pet­u­at­ing it, and the ef­fi­cien­cy of state mech­a­nisms in mit­i­gat­ing its preva­lence. Core to the theme was the well-ar­tic­u­lat­ed de­f­i­n­i­tion of child labour as work that de­prives chil­dren of their child­hood, their po­ten­tial, and their dig­ni­ty, which is harm­ful to their phys­i­cal and men­tal de­vel­op­ment and is so­cial­ly and moral­ly dan­ger­ous for them.

The top­ic’s im­por­tance made me and oth­ers, like the as­tute colum­nist Wes­ley Gib­bings, pay at­ten­tion. I had thought I was the on­ly one ob­serv­ing how a team of good, com­mit­ted pro­fes­sion­als dis­pelled any no­tion of the “ef­fi­cien­cy of state mech­a­nisms” to pro­tect chil­dren from dan­ger­ous work en­vi­ron­ments.

In 2019, the Min­istry of Labour es­tab­lished a na­tion­al over­sight steer­ing com­mit­tee, com­pris­ing mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary stake­hold­ers from gov­ern­ment min­istries, agen­cies, acad­e­mia, and civ­il so­ci­ety. That com­mit­tee’s fun­da­men­tal task is to de­vel­op a pol­i­cy and plan of ac­tion for pre­vent­ing and elim­i­nat­ing child labour. The re­sponse to Min­is­ter Kei­th Scot­land, who asked about the sta­tus of the pol­i­cy, wasn’t en­cour­ag­ing. We heard about “gaps” in the da­ta on child labour and that the pol­i­cy “is an on­go­ing ex­er­cise,” that the com­mit­tee is work­ing on var­i­ous in­puts, such as the “light work list,” on the kind of work chil­dren be­low the min­i­mum work­ing age could do. The steer­ing com­mit­tee’s five-year in­sur­mount­able prob­lem was find­ing a con­sul­tant to per­form re­search, and it had made three at­tempts.

This is T&T, 62 years af­ter in­de­pen­dence, with bil­lions spent on ed­u­ca­tion an­nu­al­ly, three uni­ver­si­ties, and sev­er­al col­leges, and the com­mit­tee couldn’t find a re­search con­sul­tant. So, they fi­nal­ly turned to the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) for as­sis­tance.

How of­ten have we heard about a child reg­istry? We’re faced with heinous crimes against chil­dren and in­creas­ing child labour. What is lack­ing is ef­fec­tive cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, mea­sur­able per­for­mance stan­dards, and the will to hold of­fi­cials ac­count­able if they don’t meet those stan­dards.

Min­is­ter Scot­land asked for a dead­line, and we learned that the draft pol­i­cy would be com­plet­ed by the end of this year. Dead­line: 2025—six years af­ter the com­mit­tee ac­knowl­edged the pol­i­cy’s crit­i­cal im­por­tance.

Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis stressed the need for a co­he­sive and proac­tive ap­proach to ad­dress­ing the prob­lem of child labour. Com­mend­ably, the com­mit­tee be­gan work in 2018 on pub­lic sen­si­ti­sa­tion and is reach­ing out to par­ents and chil­dren.

Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John men­tioned the slow progress pace, in­fer­ring a lack of ur­gency. In a mo­ment of pro­found in­sight, she re­lat­ed her child­hood labours in Char­lot­teville, To­ba­go, sell­ing fish and veg­eta­bles. It was an in­struc­tive in­ter­ven­tion. The sen­a­tor apt­ly demon­strat­ed the di­men­sions of the chal­lenge: in­ter­gen­er­a­tional cul­ture, pover­ty, ed­u­ca­tion, the dig­ni­ty of chil­dren and their in­no­cence, and the rea­sons why they work, lead­ing one to won­der why the law would pe­nalise a poor par­ent and hun­gry child earn­ing an hon­est liveli­hood—a deeply so­cial is­sue be­yond the nor­mal realm of law. How­ev­er, one un­der­stands the dan­gers to these chil­dren and the need for de­ci­sive in­ter­ven­tions.

Sen­a­tor John brought the val­ue of the en­ter­prise and the strug­gles for sur­vival to our at­ten­tion. As re­cent­ly high­light­ed in a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle, many chil­dren are de­nied ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion be­cause of their cir­cum­stances, such as in gang-con­trolled, pover­ty-strick­en Sea Lots. Some peo­ple think that school dropouts earn­ing food mon­ey by of­fer­ing a wind­screen clean­ing ser­vice are a nui­sance. But there’s dig­ni­ty in their ef­forts. Why not pro­vide them with a liv­ing stipend for au­to re­pair and main­te­nance train­ing? Com­pas­sion, re­spect, and sup­port for these chil­dren with health care, food, and ed­u­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties are nec­es­sary while we ad­dress the at­ten­dant so­cial prob­lems.

High on the list of fac­tors con­tribut­ing to an in­crease in child labour, with its dan­gers—ex­ploita­tion, trau­mat­ic phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al abuse–is gov­ern­ment in­ef­fi­cien­cy. The pol­i­cy on the pre­ven­tion and elim­i­na­tion of child labour is a cru­cial in­stru­ment for ad­vanc­ing leg­is­la­tion and op­ti­mis­ing hu­man and tech­ni­cal in­fra­struc­ture. Sen­a­tor John’s sense of ur­gency was on point, and Wes­ley Gib­bing’s de­scrip­tion of the ab­sence of a pol­i­cy as of­fi­cial neg­li­gence is not un­rea­son­able.

That hap­pens when well-in­ten­tioned peo­ple have lost the script of cre­ative think­ing and lead­er­ship. Get the pol­i­cy done.