Ghana does not use child labourers

Vice-PresidenT John Dramani Mahama has dismissed suggestions that Ghana uses children or forced labour in her cocoa industry, saying minors who accompany their parents to farms is part of social integration and not child labour.
He said minors who accompanied their parents to farms was part of their social integration and not as child labourers as being peddled about in some parts of the United States of America (USA).
Launching the “Good Taste of Ghana”, a new cocoa milk drink by Cargill Ghana Limited, in Tema yesterday, the Vice-President said recent attempts to list Ghana as a country that used child labour or forced labour on her cocoa farms was designed to tarnish the image of the country in the international community especially in the eyes of countries that patronised the country’s cocoa.
“Ghana as a signatory to various conventions on child labour would not allow any infractions such as child labour to happen in the country, especially in a prime sector like cocoa,” he emphasised.
Mr Mahama said the country’s cocoa had found its way into food products consumed all over the world, thereby making the crop Ghana’s topmost export commodity and the mainstay of the economy.
He said in spite of that remarkable achievement, “we have never been able to realise full value of our cocoa because of inadequate capacity to fully process Ghana’s cocoa beans”.
The Vice-President said as a result, about 80 per cent of the value of cocoa from the country was constantly shipped to developed countries for value addition, saying that the situation denied the country revenue, value addition, foreign earnings, technology, job creation and skilled development.
Mr Mahama said the entry of Cargill into the cocoa industry was a manifestation of President Mills’s vision to reclaim the full value of the country’s cocoa.
He said the government had initiated programmes to process at least 60 per cent of cocoa production.
That, he explained, was intended to provide a ready market for the projected increase in the annual crop yield from 700,000 metric tonnes to 1,000,000 metric tonnes within the next three years.
The Vice-President was impressed at Cargill’s capacity to transform Ghana’s cocoa beans into a wide range of products that would be sold on the global market, thereby providing the country with the highest level of value addition in cocoa.
The Managing Director of Cargill Ghana Limited, Mr Leo Winters, said Cargill had been associated with Ghana’s cocoa over the last 40 years and was happy to note that the relationship between Cargill and Ghana had improved tremendously over the years.
Mr Winters said the $100,000,000 investment by Cargill in the processing of cocoa beans in the country would help bring the good taste of Ghana’s cocoa to the world.
The MD said as part of the company’s commitment to cocoa-growing areas, it was working closely with CARE International to provide 70 cocoa-growing areas in the Ashanti Region with some education opportunities for children in an effort to increase school attendance by 17.5 per cent.
The Director of Cocoa powder Sales of Cargill, Mr Piet Van Amelrooij, said Ghana’s reputation as the leading producer of high-quality cocoa beans was well established in the world of cocoa and in the cocoa processing industry.
Mr Amelrooij commended cocoa farmers in the country for their dedication and professionalism in pre-harvesting and post-harvesting work that made cocoa from Ghana the best in the world.
He called for the continuous collaboration among Cargill, cocoa farmers and the government to maintain the very high demand of the country’s cocoa on the international market.