TIGed

Switch headers Switch to TIGweb.org

Are you an TIG Member?
Click here to switch to TIGweb.org

HomeHomeExpress YourselfPanoramaChild Labour Pt.1: A cause or a consequence of poverty?
Panorama
a TakingITGlobal online publication
Search



(Advanced Search)

Panorama Home
Issue Archive
Current Issue
Next Issue
Featured Writer
TIG Magazine
Writings
Opinion
Interview
Short Story
Poetry
Experiences
My Content
Edit
Submit
Guidelines
Child Labour Pt.1: A cause or a consequence of poverty? Printable Version PRINTABLE VERSION
by Shimaa Shaaban, Egypt Jul 10, 2003
Culture   Interviews
 1 2   Next page »

  

What are the images that you can think of when you hear the word poverty?

Poverty has many forms and various dimensions but all I could think of was the children who suffer from hunger, lack of shelter and fatal diseases. These very children are actually the backbone of their country... So imagine how the development of such a country can be like.

Nearly 30% of population in poor countries are poorest of poor who are not even able to earn enough for one day food which drives big families to largely depend on children to earn and feed.

Parents of these children are mainly illiterate or semi-literate and unable to find jobs, which can provide enough salary. The dream of education to children is impossible unless suitable employment opportunities are made available for at least one person in the family.

I tried to collect some examples and statistics of examples of children's work around the world are offered. They are to illustrate the spread of this phenomenon across different types of economies and societies.

In Bangladesh one in ten in the labour force is under 14, displacing from two to ten million adults from employment. That increasing numbers of children are coming to the labour market, to compete in the absence of an effective compulsory education system, with adults in both the formal and informal sectors.

In South Asia, the problem of working children is a major issue in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh: agriculture, the unorganised sector as also the services sector keep children engaged for several hours a day. The carpet industry of the first three countries engages children in virtually every component activity of production: dyeing, spinning and unraveling yarn, cutting and washing and so on.
Brokers in Nepal...give loans to parents in rural areas. The parents then send their children to Kathmandu to work off the loan by weaving carpets

It has been estimated that 8 million children in the range of 7 - 15 years or 5 per cent of school-aged children in Indonesia are ‘economically engaged’

Three-quarters of working children are in rural areas. In urban as opposed to rural areas, children work longer hours, girls work longer than boys and manufacturing employs more children. Further, the number of children working in manufacturing in urban areas is growing, and girls comprise two-thirds of this group. Thus industrialisation in Indonesia occurs on the backs of children.

Children account for nearly a third of all domestic workers in Indonesia and nine out of ten working children are girls. The media also often reports cases of child abuse.
One in five children (18.8 per cent) in the Philippines are actively involved as producers of goods and services. In the Philippines there are 5 million working children between the ages of 5 and 14 by 1990 though some estimates go as high as eight million.

In the United Arab Emirates (UAE) children as young as 6 were smuggled in from Asian and African countries and were exposed to death as camel riders to provide entertainment to the audience. The children are tied to the tails of the camels so that that the pain makes the camels run faster. Children often slip and get crushed under the hooves of the racing camels. As late as 1997, there was a report that a 10 year-old Bangladeshi boy died in a camel race in the UAE.

Africa is home to many abuses of children. In the absence of protective gear (masks, gloves etc.), children working on the tea and coffee plantations in some districts of Kenya fall ill regularly.

Togolese children are forced out of their homes and countries on a mass scale: they end up as servants, traders or prostitutes in the West African countries of Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon and Burkina Faso. Togo’s capital, Lome, is a site for trafficking of those children who go in search of work but are picked up and lured by false promises of a better life.

But children's work is not confined to Asia or Africa.

In Brazil’s sugar plantations, for example, children cut cane with machetes, a punishing task putting them at constant risk of mutilation. They make up a third of the workforce in some areas and are involved in over 40 per cent of the work-related accidents. Brazilian children are also exposed to snakebites and insect stings on tobacco plantations, and carry loads far beyond their capacities.

In Colombia, young people who work on flower-export farms are exposed to pesticides banned in industrialized countries. Seven year - olds are to be found working in the leather footwear industry. Since this work is undertaken in secrecy and in poor conditions, hazards are greater than in the bigger companies. The greatest hazard in these workshops is exposure to glue and other solvents that have been demonstrated to cause respiratory ailments, nausea, lethargy, and sometimes irreversible damage to the functioning of the immune system, nervous system and the liver....Injuries sometimes results in amputations.





 1 2   Next page »   


Tags

You must be logged in to add tags.

Writer Profile
Shimaa Shaaban


This user has not written anything in his panorama profile yet.
Comments
You must be a TakingITGlobal member to post a comment. Sign up for free or login.