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Child Labour Pt.2: A cause or a consequence of poverty? Printable Version PRINTABLE VERSION
by Shimaa Shaaban, Egypt Jul 10, 2003
Culture   Interviews
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If you live in Egypt you are everyday faced with pictures of small young children in poor dirty clothes and skinny faces collecting garbage, being hiy by their boss or selling toys and newspapers during traffic jams.

It is not a very happy picture, as you may imagine.

Nine of every 100 boys and 14 of every 100 girls who reach school age do not attend school.

120,000 of Egypt’s children live on the streets, escaping from harsh family conditions, poverty and an ineffective educational system.

A 1988 government survey of Egypt found that 1.4 million children between the ages of 6 and 14 work in Egypt.

The laws of child labour in Egypt state that:

-The minimum age for employment is 14 in non-agricultural work. Provincial governors, with the approval of the Minister of Agriculture, can authorise seasonal work for children between the ages of 12 and 14, provided that duties are not hazardous and do not interfere with schooling.
-Pre-employment training for children under the age of 12 is prohibited. It is prohibited for children to work for more than 6 hours a day.

Although education is compulsory for the first nine academic years, Ministry of Health figures indicate that 2 million children between the ages of six and 15 are employed. The ILO reports that, in 1995, 11.2 per cent of children aged 10 to 14 were working.

The restrictions in the new Child Law have not improved this condition due to lax enforcement on the part of the Government.

A 1989 study estimated that perhaps 720,000 children work on farms. However, children also work as apprentices in repair and craft shops, in heavier industries such as brick making and textiles, and as workers in leather and carpet making factories. Many of these children are abused and overworked by their employers.
Export industries

Among Egypt's export industries, there is evidence that child labor is used in the production of a small amount of hand-knotted carpets for export. The textile, perfume, and leather industries merit further investigation.

Hand-Knotted Carpets

Carpet making is a traditional craft in Egypt and children, almost exclusively female, typically learn the craft at home. The children are trained at an early age by an older family member. These carpets are sold primarily to the tourist market and the export market, including the United States. The United States imported approximately $500,000 in hand knotted and hooked carpets from Egypt in 1993, though this does not include carpets purchased by American tourists.

The manager of one factory reported that he also regularly ships containers of carpets to Germany for distribution throughout the industrialized world and occasionally ships directly to wholesale dealers in the United States.

Independent interviews with the child workers revealed that not all of them attend school and some work a full day from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., in violation of Egypt's labor laws. The children reported their wages as approximately $20 per month when they first start, rising eventually to $60 or more per month.

Jasmine industry

Children are regularly employed picking jasmine in Egypt.58 Between July and October, recruiters take children from villages in the Nile Delta to gather the flowers in the middle of the night, when the essence is purest. Recruiters prefer small children, because their small hands better enable them to pick delicate single flowers. The children work barefoot in the mud and must rely on their sense of touch as there is no light. The children work 9 hour shifts without eating or stopping until the morning sun grows too strong. The children are paid 3 Egyptian pounds per day. If the children stop work for any reason -- for example, to avoid swarms of mosquitos -- they may be caned by the recruiter.

Leather

Most child labor in the industry was concentrated in small enterprises that produce for domestic consumption. Children were however also found in two export-oriented workshops .The tasks performed by the children included cleaning, preparing material, and packaging. According to the ILO study, the average child working in this industry was 11.7 years old and worked 12.8 hours per day.

More recent information confirms that children 10 to 14 years old work irregular hours for what was described as "pocket money." It was reported that most of the children attended school and work either before or after classes.
Textiles

Twenty-five percent of the workers in small operated textile firms are children under the age of fifteen. Nearly 60 percent of the children worked for employers who were not personally known to the parents, and half worked outside of their immediate neighborhoods. Seventy-three percent of the children worked in excess of twelve hours per day and earned an average of $8 per month.

The working hours are no doubt a flagrant violation of the labor law which prohibits the work of juveniles after 7:00 p.m. and before 6:00 a.m., with a maximum of 6 hours, provided it is intercepted with a break, and it is prohibited to assign juveniles work for more than four consecutive hours." In factories that work on a shift system, the study found one-third of the children in those factories also worked the night shift.. Most of the children reported that their work consisted of cleaning up and carrying tools around the factory, and as attendants to the weaving machines.





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