Children workers, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India The WE News Archives

Monday, 7 November 2005

The brick chippers of Dhaka

By Fergus Walsh
BBC medical correspondent, Dhaka

Many families come from the countryside looking for work

When Bangladeshi families have nothing left and nowhere else to turn, they often end up in the brick fields of Dhaka.

They cover a vast area and it is thought 6,000 children work here.

Sabina is 12 and her brother, Rupchan, is eight.

They have worked here with their parents for a year. Neither goes to school and like their parents they cannot read or write.

It is the same with most of the children. Here education is a low priority compared to food and shelter.

Nimble fingers

Sabina works 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

She has a small hammer which she uses to smash bricks into chips.

These are then sold and used in construction to help make concrete.

Sabina, 12, and her brother, Rupchan, eight

Sabina, here with her brother, Rupchan, works seven days a week

For this unending toil in the searing heat she earns about 1,200 taka ($18) a month. Put together with the rest of the family's earnings they have just enough to survive.

The whole time we talked Sabina did not stop working. Her nimble fingers move out of the hammer's way, just in time, every few seconds... most of the time.

Some of her fingertips were black from bruises.

A little further into the brick fields I met six-year-old Rashida. She has been here for six months with her mother, Banu.

When Rashida is not chipping bricks she looks after her younger brother and sister — they spend every day in the brick fields.

They took me to their home, a one room shack made out of corrugated iron sheets.

There was no sanitation and the nearest tap was a walk away.

Most of the interior was made up of a single, raised platform where the family slept.

Like many families they moved from the countryside to Dhaka in the hope of finding work. Their home in a rural village had been swept away in a flood.

Then, five months ago, Banu's husband died of cancer. Now she struggles more than ever to feed their three children.

Banu told me she would like to send Rashida to school but she needs her to look after the two youngest and the extra money she brings in is vital.

Range of skills

The children come here a few hours a day to learn skills which may help them find a better-paid job

Ruby Noble, Unicef

There is free education in Bangladesh but when it comes to a choice between food and school, it is obvious which wins.

The UN children's fund, Unicef, estimates there are five million working children in Bangladesh aged five to 14.

Most of the employment is unregulated and they work for a pittance. Stories of cruelty and abuse are common.

Ruby Noble from Unicef showed me around a vocational training institute in Dhaka.

Child workers from around 12 upwards study a range of work skills here, from making clothes to plumbing and wiring.

Ms Noble says: "The strategy is called Earn and Learn. The children come here a few hours a day to learn skills which may help them find a better-paid job.

"The rest of the time they are free to carry on working — mostly as domestic helps in people's homes. Obviously we'd rather they were at school, but this is a realistic option which may help them build a better life in the future."

But such schemes can help only a minority.

With little social welfare, families do what they can to get by.

Very often that means the burden of work falls on the youngest members of the family.

Child labour is just one of a host of social problems facing this chaotic and overcrowded country.

And for most child workers, things are unlikely to get much better anytime soon.

Saturday, 12 June, 2004

Scraping a living on Peru streets

By Hannah Hennessy
BBC correspondent in Lima

It's all work and no school for many of Peru's street children

Diego is 14. He is short for his age and extremely slight, but his face betrays a lost childhood.

For the past eight years, he has worked in the filthy streets of Las Lomas de Carabayllo, a shanty town in the desert on the outskirts of Lima.

He works on a rubbish truck, collecting and sorting through litter from outside houses in the district.

He earns 10 soles (just over $3) for 10 hours of work.

Diego and his four siblings all work.

They have had to since their father died, leaving their mother with five young children to clothe and feed.

"I like my job, because it's the only one I have. I need to help my family, help them buy food and things," he said, explaining that he finds his food from rummaging through the rubbish bags left by other households.

Sometimes a juice that has passed its expiry date; if he is very lucky, a yoghurt.


	Many [children] are falling behind, because education just isn't seen as important Freddy Calixto Proceso Social

"The most dangerous thing is being injured by the rubbish trucks or by other vehicles," he says, ignoring the scars on his hands from sifting through rubbish that often contains metal or glass.

He hacks as he talks, his chest infected by the germs he works amongst every day.

Pressing need

The rubbish trucks that Diego works on belong to the local government.

A charity that is trying to end underage labour in Peru says the children are often hired to work on them illegally, because they are cheap.

Diego works one day on and one day off, which means he can still go to school.

But as is the case for many working children in Peru whose families live in extreme poverty, education takes a back seat to the pressing needs of the present — the need to survive from day to day.

Peruvian girl washing clothes
Millions of children work across Latin America and the Caribbean

Ines has been helping her mother recycle rubbish for as long as she can remember.

She is a tiny beautiful child, with long brown hair, dark eyes and delicate features, who looks much younger than her six years.

She says she often works all day, separating glass, metal and cardboard as she sifts through piles of rubbish.   She does not go to school, she does not play with her friends or toys.

"I help my mummy", she says.   "I don't hurt myself very often on the glass."

School's out

Freddy Calixto works with a non-governmental organisation called Proceso Social (Social Process) which is trying to help children like Diego and Ines in Las Lomas de Carabayllo.

Supported by foreign charities, like Comic Relief in the UK, the group is trying to help raise awareness of the need to end child labour and the importance of childhood education.

"Even though many of the children we help go to school, many of them are falling behind, because education just isn't seen as important," said Mr Calixto.

Proceso Social is also trying to teach families skills that might give them a better chance of finding work in an environment where there is a shortage of skilled labour and a surplus of non-skilled workers.

Diego and Ines are just two of the estimated 20 million children between the ages of five and 14 who work in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Many of them are forced to work long hours in cramped, dark or filthy conditions, victims of exploitation that ranges from verbal abuse to sexual assault.   Many of these children do not go to school.

Those who do, like Diego, often fall behind their classmates because they have been raised in an environment where their parents are uneducated and where the need for money now outweighs the need for education — or because after hours of work, they are simply too tired to learn.

Wait with mother

Indonesian poor children wait with their mother for a coupon which can be exchanged for meat during Eid al-Adha in Jakarta January 10, 2006.

Photo: REUTERS/Dadang Tri

slide cursor underneath or side of photos

Features

Indonesian children rough it out on streets
Sunday 16 November 2003

Dianthus Saputra Estey in Jakarta

The quality of life of Indonesian children according to various reports and statistics.

UNICEF and UNDP, for instance, state in their latest assessments that 40% of Indonesian children below the age of five are suffering from malnutrition and 60% of pregnant women and school age children are anaemic.


	Left to fend for themselves

Not only are children denied their rights to a decent standard of living, clean water and adequate nutrition, but also end up working the streets and are therefore denied their right to education, said Mulyadi.

My parents died and left me with nothing.   My neighbour sold my parent's house and kicked me out into the street, said nine-year-old Angga as he rushed off to clean a train in the Kota station in Jakarta. Cleaning trains at stations, selling newspapers and begging are some of the jobs these kids do to survive.

Child labour has long been a problem in Indonesia.   Children can be found working in almost all sectors of industries, from the shipping industry to the production lines of dangerous chemical substances.

Criticism

According to the latest data from the Directorate General for Manpower Supervision (DGMS), more than 500,000 children are working in the Indonesian formal sector.

Many activists have slammed the government for not taking the matter seriously.   How can the government close its eyes to this problem? We are talking about the future generation of our country, Mulyadi said.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri has conceded that the government's contribution is small.   "We must admit that we have not given what is best for our children," she said during the commemoration of National Children' Day last July.

However, DGMS chief MSM Simanihuruk is quick to defend the accusation that the government is not doing anything about this growing problem.   The government has taken steps towards banning certain jobs for children in order to protect them from health and moral hazard and to ensure their safety, he said.

“We must admit that we have not given what is best for our children.”

Megawati Sukarnoputri
President, Indonesia

Law No 13/2003 on labour prohibits the employment of children as slaves, in pornography, the drug trade and in chemically hazardous jobs.

Simanihuruk admits that the government can only enforce the ban in the formal sector. We cannot ban jobs that involve begging or singing on the streets, as that is out of our authority, he said.

Learning house

Dissatisfied with the government' move, many NGOs and activists have tried to provide an option for a better future for these kids.

Tucked in the eastern part of the capital Jakarta, for the past year, a learning house has been set up to provide general education to children aged between 3 and 15 years.

The effort has met with resistance from both the targeted children and their parents." Many of the kids have lost interest in studying. The parents prefer having their kids working to help the family rather than spending time in classes," one of the founders of this "learning house", Yani Marwoto said.


	Some organisations in the private sector provide free education

Marwoto and her colleagues were then forced to come up with a way to make the learning activities as attractive as possible.   We are providing free health care and cheaper rice for the kids and their parents, Marwoto said.

There is ample evidence to show that the streets are an unsafe place for kids.

Lost generation

One day after cleaning the station, my friends and I decided to sleep on the park.   A group of men attacked and raped us," said Selfi, a 12-year-old girl.

A report by the Jakarta office of the International Labour Organisation-International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO-IPEC) said that a large number of children in the country were trapped in the worst forms of child labour: prostitution.

The report revealed thatthe number of child prostitutesis on the increase.   In Viaduct Park, East Jakarta, for example, of 109 sex workers hawking the area, 90% were aged between 11 and 20.

An activist from the National Commission on Children' rights, Rachma Fitriani saidIndonesiawas facing the potential risk of a lost generation.   "A loss of a generation due to poverty, malnutrition, lack of education, lack of attention and lack of love," she said.

"This situation has created a new generation growing up with hatred towards society.   They grow up with a feeling of injustice, Mulyadi said.   Is this the kind of future we want for our country?"

Aljazeera

Tuesday, 13 June 2006

Child labour — India's 'cheap commodity'

Campaigners say that many children work in appalling conditions

By Navdip Dhariwal
BBC News, Tamil Nadu

Farm workers toil long hours in the fields in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu for little reward in the intense heat.

But it is often their only means of survival.

Cheap labour is one commodity India has in abundance.

Hidden from public view though, is another workforce.

In an isolated spot, miles from the nearest town, is a thriving matchstick industry.

Here inside makeshift straw huts — and in the small dwellings that neighbour them — we found some of India's youngest workers.

Rows of exhausted young girls — up to 20 and as young as five are working alongside their mothers.

For 16 hours a day their tiny blistered fingers skilfully turn out matches for export.

Ordered to leave

The toxic smell of sulphur is overwhelming in the windowless room.

CHILD LABOUR 2006

218m aged 5-17 in work

126m in hazardous work

Almost 50m work in Africa

122m work in Asia

70% of workers in agriculture

Estimated cost of ending child labour: $760m over 20 years
Source: International Labour Organisation

Read the full ILO report
(1.1MB)

Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader

Download the reader here

Twelve-year-old Sindhu dips the tips of the sticks into hot sulphur.

"I start work early but don't finish until late into the night.   I get paid less than two dollars a week."

Our presence was clearly not welcome.   As we were speaking to the girls the owner came in and ordered us to leave.

Within walking distance are other factories.   But again, when we arrived, the youngest workers were quickly led away.

While the factory owner denied he was employing underage workers, almost every single household in this part of Tamil Nadu has one or more children working long hours in appalling conditions.

Campaigners say over 11 million children are forced to work in India.

Lighting a fire for a rare family meal, Sarojama gathers her five grandchildren around her.

Exploited

She has barely been able to feed them, so she was forced to borrow money from a local factory owner.

Child labor worker in Indian match factory

Campaigners say over 11 million children work in India

Unable to pay back the loan she sent her young grand-daughter to work. Parimeeta was taken out of school and has been working 12 hour days for two years.

The debt is less than $20.

Campaigners fear that as India's economy continues to boom, children are increasingly being exploited to meet the country's hunger for global success.

In a recent raid in the capital Delhi, police rescued a large number of boys from local sweatshops.

Agents had lured them from India's poorest regions, promising the children that they would be taken care of and paid well.

They were found hidden on the top floors of garment factories — held captive in filthy cramped rooms under lock and key.

They painstakingly spent hours applying crystals to garments. Many of the clothes end up being sold in shops in the UK.

Ineffective

These are places the authorities say are difficult to close down.

But Swami Agnivesh of the Bonded Liberation Front says that hundreds of children are kept hidden from public view in the buildings of crammed alleyways.

"They are kept in the most appalling conditions and not enough is being done to help them," he said.

India has laws in place to protect children and bans the use of young workers, but they remain pretty ineffective.

The United Nations Children's' Fund says that the sheer volume of children engaged in work is living proof of the world's failure to protect them.

That is the reason why the agency's work is focused on building a protective environment which safeguards children from exploitation and abuse.

In Tamil Nadu local charities have helped pay off families' debts so that at least some children can be released from the matchstick factories.

Finally freed from the shackles of work, they now have some hope of reliving their childhood.

Bu it is often a dream that is short-lived.

Charity workers admit most of the children are likely to find themselves forced back into a life of bondage.