The International Labour Organisation (ILO) will spend sh322 million to create three zones of free child labour across the country by 2013.

The organization’s new initiative dubbed National Action Plan (NAP) will in its first phase roll out the programme in three districts – Kitui, Kilifi and Busia. The project seeks to tackle cases of child labour in the regions.

ILO senior programme officer for Kenya Ms Catherine Nderi, says the first phase will target 1,000 families living in the districts before its implemented in other regions across, depending on the outcome of the first process.

Ms Nderi, who spoke at a stakeholders meeting in Kitui hotel, where she said the program will focus on elimination of labour among 8,155 victims before it is expanded to other parts of the country.

In 2008, reports indicated that of Kenya’s 9.6 million school age children, 2.6 million or the equivalent of 27 per cent, were not attending school. The ILO then estimates that out of the 2.6 million, 1.6 million are child labourers. This, the agency says, is an enormous challenge that may defeat the achievement of the Education for All by 2015.

The ILO will use the Intergrated Area Based (IAB) approach because despite the Free Primary Education Programme offered by the Government, child labour continues to be a menace in Kenya. Children who are of school going age have been forced to either drop out or do not join classes at all.

Ms Nderi says: “The IAB approach will be used to reach families and identify the reasons which lead to children becoming labourers at such a tender age. This approach will hopefully assist in developing interventions that will benefit children engaged as labourers.”

Child labour is usually pegged on poverty where poor families living in rural and urban parts of the country mostly have children fending for the families and siblings. The HIV/Aids scourge also has left many children either as orphans or sole bread winners after the death of the parents. Others have become too weak or bed-ridden. Other children are merely helping parents to get basic needs, including food, shelter and clothing. In rural areas, children work in coffee plantations, tea estates, stone quarries, while in the towns, the can be traced hawking snacks and household items, selling second-hand clothes, dumpsite workers, house helps or shamba boys.