By Maria Tembo

Ntchisi, November 22, Mana: CARE Malawi in collaboration with Eclt Foundation has withdrawn 910 children from child labour and taken them back to school in Ntchisi district.

CARE Malawi Education Program Lead, Limbani Chipembere, made the remarks during a ground breaking ceremony of a two classroom block at Chandawe Primary School in the area of Senior Chief Chilooko in the district.

Chipembere said through Protect the Future: Ending Child Labour in the Agriculture Industry in Malawi (PROCLAIM) project, being implemented in Mchinji and Ntchisi, the organization has also managed to protect 30,000 children from child labour in the two districts.

He said it is encouraging to see that Community Child Labour Committees (CCLC) continue to help the organization by withdrawing children from child labour and reporting the perpetrators of the malpractice to relevant authorities.

He said: “We will continue withdrawing children from child labour and sending them to school because we want to see them becoming reliable citizens of the country. We also support their families in different ways because we want them to avoid sending their children to work in tobacco and coffee fields.”

Head Teacher for Chandawe Primary School, Andrew Banda, thanked the organization for the school block project and said once completed it will help ease insufficient school blocks the school is currently facing.

“The classroom block project will act as a motivation to our learners as some of them, specifically standard 3 and 4 learners, learn in churches. We believe that performance among learners will also increase.

“The enrollment rate has increased through PROCLAIM project. We believe that, going forward, we will see a lot of children being enrolled at the school,” he said.

Eclt Foundation Programme Officer, Vincent Raad, said four school blocks and two teacher’s houses will be constructed in Mchinji and Ntchisi districts and more than 400 million will be used for both projects.