Cocoa producers have until July 1, 2005 to prove that their beans were produced without child labour, to be able to sell on the international market, the Ghana News Agency (GNA) reported on Wednesday.
Kwame Sarpong, chief executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board said that the certification had become necessary because of concerns raised by global consumers over the use of child labour in the cultivation of cocoa beans.
”Members who fail to meet the requirements would have their beans rejected in the international market,” he said.
Ghana is the World’s second-largest producer of cocoa, producing more than 700 000 tonnes in the 2003-04 season and trailing only Côte d’Ivoire.
The child labour certification is part of efforts by cocoa producing countries to weed out child labour from their farms, Sarpong told a consultative meeting on the elimination of the worst forms of child labour in cocoa-growing areas in Ghana.
He said that importing countries would also demand to know what action had been taken on child labour by cocoa growers.
He said that the presence of child labour in Ghana’s cocoa industry was not well researched, noting that there had been only two studies on the subject. These confirmed that there were children working on cocoa farms, mostly the children of farm labourers rather than the children of farm owners.
He said that neither study documented child trafficking in the cocoa sector in Ghana.
Sarpong noted that poverty constituted the biggest problem in combating the worst forms of child labour and urged the government to ensure that farmers were paid good prices for their products. – Sapa-DPA