A Child Labour Scene
It was late May 2020, on a cold, rainy afternoon, in an area once rated alongside Chernobyl. ‘Akufo-Addo,’ 8 years old, stood on e-waste heap (discarded computer parts and broken cathode-ray tube [CRT] glasses) in the rain. Born Kevin Twum Barimah, he’s nicknamed after Ghana’s current president due to their uncanny resemblance. Akufo-Addo cannibalizes from […]
May 28, 2020
May 28, 2020
14 Min read time
Child labour: An 8-year-old urban poor boy nicknamed after Ghana's current president is working in the rain. 'Akufo-Addo' is engaged in hazardous child labour in Accra, Ghana's capital city. Behind him: Debrah, 15 years old, had just smashed a CRT TV against a rock to recover the iron materials inside. Nearly 2 million children in Ghana are in child labour. More than 70 million children worldwide are in hazardous child labour, ILO estimates show. © 2020 Muntaka Chasant
It was late May 2020, on a cold, rainy afternoon, in an area once rated alongside Chernobyl. ‘Akufo-Addo,’ 8 years old, stood on e-waste heap (discarded computer parts and broken cathode-ray tube [CRT] glasses) in the rain. Born Kevin Twum Barimah, he’s nicknamed after Ghana’s current president due to their uncanny resemblance. Akufo-Addo cannibalizes from […]
It was late May 2020, on a cold, rainy afternoon, in an area once rated alongside Chernobyl.
‘Akufo-Addo,’ 8 years old, stood on e-waste heap (discarded computer parts and broken cathode-ray tube [CRT] glasses) in the rain.
Born Kevin Twum Barimah, he’s nicknamed after Ghana’s current president due to their uncanny resemblance.
Akufo-Addo cannibalizes from discarded e-waste on the fringes of Agbogbloshie, Ghana, for a living.
Chattering and shivering in a sweater with a broken zipper, he used his bare hands and rocks to break apart old televisions sets for the iron materials inside.
He was desperate, and needed the money very badly for food.
I always intervene whenever I run into ‘Akufo-Addo,’ but that doesn’t solve the problem.
Iron scrap sold for GH₵1.00 (around $0.17) per kilo at Agbogbloshie in late May 2020.
He had what appeared to be acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis. When I asked if he had had any medical attention, he responded in twi, a local dialect: “me gyinsor.”
“My urine,” he said.
He told me his mother asked him to put his urine inside his eye as a way to cure the inflammation of the conjunctiva.
It was the first time I had heard of using one’s own urine as a home treatment for conjunctivitis.
Read more about Akufo-Addo here:
Learn more about the hazardous child labour situation at Agbogbloshie here:
Child Labourer Cut By A CRT Glass
Turned away from Akufo-Addo for a moment, and Joseph Akwah, 17 years old, was bleeding from a cut from a broken CRT glass.
Children engaged in hazardous work on the fringes of Agbogbloshie are not only exposed to heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and chromium, they are also regularly cut by broken CRT glass.
Joseph lives on his own and had moved to the area from Winneba Junction, a town in the Central Region of Ghana, to work as an e-waste miner.
See Joseph Akwah about 2 weeks earlier here.
Read the links above to get up to speed on this hazardous child labour situation.
© 2020 Muntaka Chasant
May 28, 2020
14 Min read time
MUNTAKA CHASANT
Hi, Muntaka Chasant here. I'm, among many other things, an entrepreneur and a documentary photographer. I'm here on the front lines of urban struggle — only with my wits and cameras — capturing key moments, collecting untold stories, and helping to forge new paths.
