Two activities namely Red card for child labour and One gold –one target: Removing child labour will be organise at the Quan Ngua Sport Complex in Hanoi on June 12 to mark the World Day Against the Child Labour.

The event is co-orgasnised by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, the Vietnam Sports Association, the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) office in Vietnam, the Save the Children Organisation and AECID, the official Spanish Agency for international development cooperation and for humanitarian assistance.

The highlight of the event will be the friendship football match between the children and the Vietnamese national squad. Coaches Mai Duc Chung and Henrique Calisto will the referees of the match with Diem Quynh and sport dancer Khanh Thi acting as MCs along with Michael Hoy, 2^nd Secretary of the Australian Embassy.

As part of the event, the opening ceremony of the 2010 National Youth Sport Dance Festival will also take place with the participation of more than 2,000 children.

The World Day Against Child Labour in Vietnam will serve as a bridge to link the nation’s activities to various activities around the world to solve the child labour issue and call for urgent action. It will be organised along with the World Cup in South Africa. To promote the Red card for child labour and One gold –one target: Removing child labour movements, attendances at the stadiums in the World Cup will raise cards with the words Red card for child labour.

At the meeting on June 7, Pham Van Tuan, Deputy Head of the General Department of Sport and Physical Training and Dang Hoa Nam, Deputy Head of the Department of Child Care and Protection under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs praised the meaning of the activities and stressed that they will provide the Vietnamese children with a chance to relax and join with the community to remove the child labour.

Deputy Head Tuan hailed the great contributions of the press to covering child abuse cases in recent times and considered it a useful tool in raising public awareness of the issue.

Rie Kjeldgaard, Director of the ILO office in Vietnam, committed that her organisation will work with Vietnam to eliminate child labour in the country and emphasised the government should give highest priority to the children so they can have a chance to learn and develop their skills.

There are about 215 million labour children in the world today and more than half of them have to work in a dangerous and toxic environment.

Source: VOVNews