Child Poverty
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. Mother Teresa Kwaku Michael is a 7-year-old scavenger and urban miner who spends his days cannibalizing from e-waste on the margins of Agbogbloshie, Ghana. Child Poverty Images […]
May 6, 2020
May 6, 2020
14 Min read time
Child Poverty: Smiling Kwadwo Michael is a 7 years old urban poor who lives on the fringes of Agbogbloshie, Ghana. He uses his bare hands and stones to break apart e-waste for the precious metals inside, exposing himself to heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic. Worldwide, 73 million children between 5 and 17 years are in hazardous child labour, according to the ILO. © 2020 Muntaka Chasant
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. Mother Teresa Kwaku Michael is a 7-year-old scavenger and urban miner who spends his days cannibalizing from e-waste on the margins of Agbogbloshie, Ghana. Child Poverty Images […]
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Kwaku Michael is a 7-year-old scavenger and urban miner who spends his days cannibalizing from e-waste on the margins of Agbogbloshie, Ghana.
Child Poverty Images
Michael sometimes uses his hands and stones to break apart vintage televisions that are based on a cathode-ray tube for the iron materials inside, exposing himself to dangerous levels of lead.
Exposure to lead is associated with neurocognitive deficits in children, including intellectual impairment, shortened attention span, and even reproductive problems later in life.
Child Poverty: This 7-year-old (Kwadwo Michael ) is engaged in hazardous child labour on the margins of Agbogbloshie, Ghana. He uses his bare hands to sift through e-waste dumps for scrap metals and valuable electronic components, exposing himself to heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. Around 1 in 5 children in Africa (compared to 1 in 25 in Europe & Central Asia) is in child labour, according to the ILO. UNICEF estimates that millions of the world’s poorest urban children are more likely to die young than their rural peers. © 2020 Muntaka Chasant
The minimum age for hazardous work in Ghana is 18, according to Section 91 of the Children’s Act (560).
Agbogbloshie is renowned for its heavy metals pollution levels. Michael is also exposed to toxic materials such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel, and cadmium from the informal recycling of e-waste around the area.
Michael is exposed to heavy metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, and chromium.
I have been documenting this hazardous child labour problem at Agbogbloshie for some time. See the article below for details and more photographs:
Urban Outcasts: Children of Agbogbloshie
See hazardous child labour at Agbogbloshie and a missing child found through this article.
© 2020 Muntaka Chasant
May 6, 2020
14 Min read time
MUNTAKA CHASANT
Hi, Muntaka Chasant here. I'm, among many other things, an entrepreneur and a social 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.
