Education key to break cycle of poverty: Ponticelli

Washington, D.C. Aug 27, 2008

The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) today released its seventh annual report on efforts being made to combat the worst forms of child labor by governments in 141 countries and territories that receive U.S. trade benefits. ILAB's Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking prepared the department's 2007 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor as required under the Trade and Development Act of 2000.

"Education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty that traps children and their families," said Deputy Undersecretary for International Labor Affairs Charlotte (Charlie) Ponticelli. "By highlighting child labor around the world, we hope that this report will spur new actions and renewed momentum to rescue children from a life of poverty and exploitation, and offer them a brighter future."

 "This report reveals that many governments are demonstrating the will to change children's lives, but it also makes clear that there is much more still to do to protect children around the world from exploitive child labor," said U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao. "Sustained partnerships by governments, the private sector and international organizations are needed to provide these children with access to the education and resources to enable them to overcome the poverty and exploitation that has defined
their childhood."

As defined by the International Labor Organization Convention 182, the worst forms of child labor include any form of slavery, such as forced or indentured child labor; the trafficking of children and the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict; child prostitution and pornography; the use of children for illicit activities such as drug trafficking; and work that is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.

Welcoming the USDOL's 2008 report on worst forms of child labor, Mr. Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson Global March Against Child Labor said that once again it is reiterated that elimination of child labor is the key factor in attaining education for all, on the other hand education is one of the most effective preventive and curative measure in combating worst forms of child labor. He applauded the US Department of Labor's effort in establishing clear inter linkages which will have far reaching policy and funding implications.

Mr. Satyarthi reminded that knowledge deficit on worst forms of child labor particularly in Asian countries, the hard to reach as well as the children missed out of schools is a major obstacle in achieving EFA and MDG goals.  Mr. Satyarthi has demanded the governments to identify and map the areas of hard to reach children, devise innovative measures to bring them to classrooms and allocate additional funds for their withdrawal from worst forms of labor, trafficking and commercial and sexual  exploitation.

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Brazil: Back There

Oscar Niemeyer, Adib Domingos Jatene, Ivo Pitanguy are the exceptions.  Very rare are our philosophers, writers, scientists, professionals who achieve international recognition and will be remembered in the future for their contributions to humanity.  We do not have a single Nobel Prize in science or literature

This is not a Brazilian genetic problem. It results from the limitations of our elementary and secondary education in generating thinkers who meet the world's highest standards.

More than any other professional, the intellectual is a product of society and relies upon the intellectual stimulation of his or her surroundings.  For thinking to advance to the international level, intellectual activity demands dialogue and debate.  But Brazil does not have an intellectual mass and falls into a vicious circle:  being a nation of few intellectuals impoverishes everyone both in the number of intellectuals and in the level of Brazilian intellectual life.  The dialogue and debate are limited to the very few persons who graduate from a good secondary school, attend a good university, have a good breadth of reading, know the classics in each area of knowledge, develop their potential to historic and international levels.  With the immense majority of the population excluded from intellectual activities, the few educated Brazilians stand out without much competition.

Eighty percent of adults hardly finish secondary school.  They read no more than a few books over the course of their entire lives.  Among the rest, at the maximum 5% manage to complete a reasonable course of studies, acquire a minimum of intermediately solid culture.  It is thus relatively easy for them to achieve recognition as scholars in this country, but not abroad.

The quota of exclusion of the others protects our intellectuals.  The Brazilian intellectuals have space because those without quality schools remain excluded.  Even the quota for black university students is exclusionary since it seeks to privilege race but only for those who finish their secondary education and not for the millions without a good elementary and secondary education.

By excluding millions of Brazilians from school, we are throwing away the geniuses left behind.  We are reducing the number of those who have access to the quality school; we are diminishing the level of work demanded in the education of those who study.  We leave millions of Brazilians uneducated and have educated Brazilians without competition who have made accommodations because of the educational poverty surrounding them.  Under these conditions, even the good school becomes bad.  To survive and to stand out, the intellectual elite does not need to be good:  they stand out without making an effort.

This proves the old saying  "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."  That is the rule for creating thinkers in Brazil.

We do not have a Nobel Laureate but we have many of the world's best soccer players.  Because no boy is excluded in soccer, all boys all have the same chance on the improvised soccer field.

Our players are outstanding there abroad because their preparation is the result of competition with everyone here inside the country, all those boys between the ages of four and eighteen.  Thus is national competition elevated to world standards.  The ones who win are the best and the most persistent.  And since the majority of Brazilians are poor, most of the soccer stars come, naturally, from the poorest strata of Brazilian society.

In education, the exact opposite happens.  It is as if Brazil were a ship filled with children and young people, throwing 60 boys and girls into the sea per minute during the years of elementary and secondary education (200 days per year with four hours of class per day).  The debate is restricted to the few who arrive at the end without competition and without the need to study much.

If, back there in Recife where I grew up, all the boys and girls had parents who gave them the incentive to study, as I had; had access to good schools, as I had; had siblings and friends who studied and read, as I had; had a good faculty, not only in their area but also in the debate of ideas, as I had, then you would not be reading this article.  Because someone better would have taken my place.  Or, perhaps, the competition would have made me a better writer.

On the one hand, I was the beneficiary:  Few Brazilians were competing for the space I achieved.  On the other, I was diminished since I did not have to compete with a greater number.  The same happens with Brazil:  it has remained behind because it left many Brazilians behind.

* Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PDT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04).  He is the current president of the Senate Education Commission.

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Child Labor and Violence Explain Low School Attendance in Brazil

Brazzil Magazine
Wednesday, 27 August,  2008

Brazil's Ministry of Education (MEC) publicized a report revealing the principal causes which led students benefiting from the Bolsa Família (Family Voucher), a program that provides a stipend to families on the condition that their children attend school and be vaccinated, to miss school during the months of February and March of 2008. 

Among the reasons are: illness among the students, negligence of the parents, premature pregnancy, begging, child labor, and domestic violence.  There were 172,452 children and adolescents with low school attendance during this period.

The Brazilian federal government has been monitoring the school attendance of children and adolescents who benefit from the Bolsa Família since 2005.  In 2007, the Ministry added a control whose effectiveness are not yet determined: every time a child registered in the program misses more than 15% of school days, the school has to note the reason for the lack of attendance. 

In this latest report, more than half of these notations are classified as "without an identified motive".  This indicates a problem needing to be solved but there remains doubt over whether the school really does not know why the student is missing or whether the school is simply not interested in reporting it.

São Paulo is the state that leads the ranking with the greatest number of students with low attendance.  There were 54,464 in the first two months of the school year, of which 34,531 were classified as having unidentified motives, and 6,321 were caused by parental negligence. 

In second place was Minas Gerais, with 17,783 recorded, and Ceará was in third place, with 10,844.  The families who do not comply with the minimum required attendance of 85% for students between the ages of 6 and 15 are subjected to sanctions which range from warnings to loss of the stipend.  In February and March of this year, 1.2% of the beneficiaries in this age group had low attendance.

Since 2007, MEC's Secretariat for Continuing Education, Literacy, and Diversity (Secad) has carried out the Projeto Presença, an online system which monitors the causes of student absences.  The system is used by more than 12 thousand people, by school employees and municipal and state secretaries of education who have been trained in all of the country's 5,564 municipalities to operate the system of sending data through the Internet. 

Now, the challenge is to guarantee that the data, with a nominal list of students who are victims of various rights violations, does not merely become another set of statistics.

In accordance with the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education, the control of school attendance is the responsibility of the school.  In spite of these, according to article 56 of the Statute of Children and Adolescents, the directors of elementary schools are obligated to communicate with the Guardianship Council any cases that involve maltreatment of their students, repeated unjustified absences, truancy, and high levels of grade repetition.  However, the lack of preparation of the educational system to deal with these problems make it difficult to fulfill the law.

The MEC is trying to change this reality.  In 2007, the Ministry trained 700 professors to deal, in the classroom, with physical and psychological violence, negligence, sexual exploitation, and child labor. 

The project Schools Which Protect received an investment of 3.7 million Brazilian reais (US$ 2.3 million) in 2007.  In 2008, the budget projected 6.5 million reais (US$ 4 million), but up to the end of the first semester, nothing was spent and there is still no word on when the program will be re-instituted.

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Domestic Workers Everywhere in Thailand but Invisible

By BRUCE LIM / IPS WRITER

BANGKOK — Working in the confines of private homes, unprotected by the labor laws of the country, Thailand’s domestic workers are a silently suffering lot.

Thailand has 64,044 registered domestic workers. But the actual figures may be much higher says Kanokwan Moratsatian of the Foundation for Child Development (FCD) who estimates that about a million households in the country are capable of hiring domestic help.

The fact that many domestic workers are migrants from neighboring Burma—
including undocumented ones—adds to the difficulties in affording them protection.

Existing labor legislation on informal work has also not been easy to implement.

"Issuing laws is the quickest way but, even so, not much progress has been made," acknowledges Sureeporn Punpuing of the Social and Population Research Institute of Mahidol University.

For experts like her and others who spoke at a recent seminar on domestic workers’ rights in Thailand, organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, HomeNet-Thailand and the Thai Labor Solidarity Committee, the biggest hurdle in providing protection has been the fact that, unlike factory workers or other employees in the work force, domestic workers are not easy to reach.

"Investigators cannot enter homes as they are private territories," said Moratsatian.

Domestic workers in Thailand are not covered by social security, although a policy to include them in the net is being put up. There is no fixed minimum wage nor mandated day-offs, other than an annual six-day vacation.

While Thai citizens are covered by the national health insurance scheme free of charge, migrant workers have to pay an annual fee of 1,900 baht (US $57.5) and an additional 30 baht (91 cents) per service.

Rujisa Saenwi from the Foundation of Health and Knowledge of Ethnic Labor recalled some of ways the group has tried to reach out to domestic workers. "In the past, we would only hear about their problems when they come to us or at gatherings. In order to have constant contact with them, we opened a P.O. box," she said.

But the idea proved unsuccessful as the foundation "received very few letters over the months," Saenwi said. Perhaps this was because it was hard for domestic workers to leave their homes to mail letters.

Given the different work environments of domestic labor, several discussants suggested giving equal importance to educating and sensitizing employers so that they understand that domestic workers are people who have the same basic rights as other employees.

"It’s not just making laws but also changing the perception of the people," said Poonsap Tulaphan of HomeNet.

Addressing the seminar participants, Somjit, a domestic worker for more than 20 years, said: "Working for foreigners is better. They treat you better and also pay you for overtime work."

A survey conducted by the Social and Population Research Institute of Mahidol University showed that 60 percent of domestic workers were prohibited from meeting people outside the household while 75 percent were not allowed to leave freely. Half of the employers polled felt that they had the right to restrain workers’ movements and withhold their identity cards.

"There were many domestic workers that don’t have day-offs or were not allowed to go out," Rujisa added. "They also fear talking to the employers and would often wait until the employers seem to be in a lighter mood before approaching them."

A survey by the Social and Population Research Institute on 500 domestic workers in Mae Sot province near Thailand’s border with Burma, where many Burmese migrants work, showed that while seven percent of domestic workers there were not paid for overtime work, 85 percent received less than 3,000 baht ($ 91) a month, the minimum wage for Thai workers in the area.

While some might argue that the food and shelter provided by employers count for compensation, activists say that a large portion of domestic workers’ meals were sub-standard and consisted mainly of leftover food. "Twenty percent of these workers had no privacy and slept on the floor," Sureeporn added.

The FCD has been organizing discussions with employer groups, child labor groups and others. It has published articles on domestic workers’ rights through print as well as other media, such as community radio. The foundation also focuses on improving the home environment such as by educating children to raise their awareness and acceptance of workers’ rights.

Asked why there are only portrayals of the negative cases and problems around domestic work, Sureeporn said: "We are presenting only the negative because we want change. We have to go deep into the source of the problem. It is seen that if the employer is good, we wouldn’t have so many problems."

"Domestic work is an important source of income for women with low education," explained Tim De Meyer, a specialist on international standards from the International Labor Organization (ILO), who attended the seminar.

De Meyer said that domestic workers, estimated to number over a 100 million, formed one of the "largest yet unprotected segments in the global workforce".

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Vietnam: Officials discuss ways to improve child protection

Officials met Friday in Hanoi to discuss measures to improve child protection, including public awareness, laws, childcare and enforcement.

“Child abuse prevention is the duty of every family, school, residential community, political system and the whole society,” Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan told the meeting

“We need to have a complete shift in awareness and actions to effectively coordinate child abuse prevention,” she said.

A representative from the Police Department for Criminal Investigation under the Ministry of Public Security said some kids were at risk because they had poor, uneducated or overworked families who didn’t properly supervise them.

Vietnam had about 143,000 orphans, 45,000 working children, and 20,000 children involved in prostitution, according to a report issued at the meeting.

The report said some localities made it easy for perpetrators because of an indifference to create a sound family-school-community environment.

Meanwhile, some people in Vietnam have a traditional misconception of “spare the rod, and spoil the child.”

A study carried out in 2006, showed that over half of the children interviewed said their parents reprimanded them with curses, insults and slaps.

The survey by Vietnam’s Committee for Population, Family and Children, and Plan Vietnam, an international charity working with children was conducted in Hanoi, three northern provinces – Bac Giang, Phu Tho and Thai Nguyen, and central Quang Binh.

Although Vietnam has fairly adequate anti-child abuse regulations in line with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children, they are scattered too widely for an overall child protection program, Nguyen Hai Anh from the Ministry of Justice said.

Vietnam initiated criminal proceedings in 3,719 cases, or 73.3 percent of the total child abuse cases, and arrested 4,418 people between 2005 and 2007.

Delegates said better policing of child abuse and child labor was needed, along with more monitoring of teaching methods and moral standards at schools.

Childcare activities should be improved and organizations and volunteer groups set up for children, the meeting heard.

Vietnam was the first country in Asia and the second in the world to approve the U.N. convention on children’s rights.

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INDONESIA: Poverty at root of commercial sex work

JAKARTA (IRIN) - In a district of the northeastern part of West Java, commercial sex workers are touting for business right outside the mosque. Bandungwangi, a local NGO working against trafficking, says half the women and children it rescues from prostitution in Jakarta come from this district.

Photo: A. Mirza/ILO Although Indonesian NGOs run concerted campaigns to rescue girls working the streets, most of them want to continue being sex workers because, they say, they and their families need the money

"The root of the problem is poverty, but in some areas - like that district [child protection agencies have asked that its name not be revealed] in West Java - prostitution is accepted. It's the culture," explains Arum Ratnawati of the International Labor Organization's (ILO) International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labor, with people so poor they are forced to sell or send their children into commercial sex work to earn income for the family.

In a country with high unemployment and over 4 million school-age children unable to go to school, it is not difficult to understand how trafficking can thrive. The latest government estimates in 2004 put the number of children trafficked for prostitution at 21,000 for Java and 70,000 for the whole of Indonesia. But the ILO says this is just the tip of the iceberg as trafficking is notoriously difficult to track.

Photo: A. Mirza/ILO In Jakarta, girls await customers and for an overpriced bottle of tea, as little as US$5.50, a customer gets to fondle the young girls

In seedy areas of Jakarta, these girls can be found in small cafes offering customers off-menu items or trawling the streets to find men. For a mere IDR 50,000 (about $5.50), in many cafes, the men get to fondle the girls from the waist up.

In the Batam Islands, 45 minutes by ferry from Singapore, and on the beaches of Bali, ILO says thousands of girls have been trafficked to service foreigners. Elsewhere, locals are the customers. Dolly and Jarak in Surabaya, the main seaport city in eastern Java, are now considered the biggest red-light districts in Southeast Asia, Ratnawati told IRIN.

The stories are usually the same: poor, uneducated girls who do not know how to protect themselves are preyed upon by people they trust, including relatives or neighbors, who promise to give them jobs in the city or abroad. They end up working in brothels, forced to pay off the IDR500,000 or IDR1 million ($55 or $110) the trafficker paid their parents.

Uphill battle

NGOs such as Bandungwangi, however, struggle to prevent more trafficking and to rescue victims. "It is very, very difficult to get women out of prostitution," executive director Anna Sulikhah told IRIN.

Photo: A. Mirza/ILO Prostitution and human trafficking thrives in Indonesia, principally because of poverty. Government estimates in 2004 put the number of children trafficked for prostitution at 21,000 for Java and 70,000 for the whole of Indonesia

While they conduct awareness-raising activities and provide skills training, these NGOs find that many prostitutes do not want to be rescued. "Out of 500 children we tried to rescue over the past four years, only around 150 really want to quit prostitution," says Ratnawati. "They give up their rights because of their economic situation. They need the money."

Exacerbating the problem is that a third of children in rural areas have no birth certificate, and passports are easily forged in Indonesia. "They can just go to the village leader to ask for a letter that says they are 21 years old," adds Ratnawati. This allows children to cross borders for work.
In the northeastern district of West Java, the problem goes even deeper than poverty and inefficiencies in the system. "In this district, girls are treated like 'assets' because they can marry several times or become prostitutes," explains Sulikhah. "It is the culture of the area." Sheer poverty and the lack of income-generating opportunities have made commercial sex work a norm in this district. In fact, some of the girls they rescued and returned home were sent back to Jakarta by their families.

The local government tries to stem the tide of girls leaving their district by refusing to issue letters that guarantee they are of working age, knowing they will end up in brothels around Indonesia or abroad. But the families tell them: "Who is going to feed us then?"

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Bangladesh: Change attitude towards child domestic helps Speakers tell seminar

Daily Star, Staff Correspondent, Aug 28th 2008

Speakers at a seminar yesterday called for formulating specific laws and changing attitude towards the domestic helps to ensure their safety in the workplaces.

The speakers also said that the government should amend the Bangladesh Labor Act 2006 adding clauses ensuring child domestic helps' safety and impose a ban on recruiting children below 14 years of age.

They also urged the government to recognize the works of the domestic helps and prepare a guideline about the child domestic helps' wages, working hours and other facilities.

The seminar on 'Proposed National Child Labor Policy and protection and welfare of the child domestic helps' was organized by Shaishab Bangladesh in association with Manusher Jonno Foundation at the BIAM auditorium in the city.

In his keynote paper, Sultan Uddin Ahmed, assistant executive director of Bangladesh Institute of Labor Studies (BILS), quoting a survey said about 4.2 lakh children are currently working as domestic helps in the country while about 65 percent of the workers get wages below Tk 500.

He also said at least 217 domestic helps were killed between 2001 and 2008. Besides, 97 were injured, 40 were raped and 23 went missing during the period.

Speaking as the chief guest, Secretary to the Ministry of Labor and Employment Dr Mahfuzul Haque said a law could be formulated for safeguarding the child domestic helps but change in mindset about them and awareness about their rights would be more effective.

“Domestic work should be considered hazardous since most of the time we do not know what they are doing,” he added.

“We must think of a time where no such works would exist and for that we can give employment to the parents of the child domestic helps so that they don't send their children to workplaces and we must develop a tendency to do our works ourselves,” added Dr Mahfuz.

Executive Director of Manusher Jonno Foundation Shaheen Anam said domestic work should be recognized and people should develop a positive attitude towards domestic helps.

“We must uphold the dignity of labor, otherwise we will not be able to get rid of the problems,” she said while speaking as a special guest.

She suggested formulating a law providing the domestic helps with identity cards and appointment letters and introducing a system to monitor their condition at the workplaces.

Presided over by Dr Mohammad Ibrahim, member of executive committee of Shaishab Bangladesh, the meeting was also addressed by Mohammad Azizur Rahman, joint secretary to the Ministry of Labor and Employment.

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Pakistan: SPARC issues child abuse statistics

Daily Times, Lahore, Aug 28th 2008

* Report reveals ‘widespread’ phenomenon of male child prostitution
* Says children serving long terms in prison for minor offences
* Says that 11,000 kiln workers in Sahiwal are under the age of 16

By Ali Usman

LAHORE: The number of cases of child abuse reported across the country increased from 4,386 to 5,268 in 2007, a report by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) has revealed.

In 2006, the number of child trafficking cases was 86, police torture 96 and suicide incidents 18 whereas in 2007, cases of child kidnapping increased to 324, police torture 241 and suicides to 520. The report will be released on Thursday (today) in a press conference at the Lahore Press Club (LPC).

The statistics also reveal that 726 children were murdered; 387 female and 305 male children were sexually assaulted; 366 children became victims of physical torture; 85 were punished under Karo Kari; 1,084 children were kidnapped; and 1,230 children went missing during 2007. The issue of violence against children is worsening as around 3,051 children were victimized in Punjab. Balochistan had the lowest number of cases, with 225 abuse cases in 2007.

Prostitution: The report, ”State of Pakistan’s Children”, presented the situation of children and their rights in 2007. It focused on health, education, child labor and violence against children in light of the government’s policy. The report identified the poor state of education in Pakistan. It also revealed the phenomenon of male child prostitution, and claimed that it was widespread, especially in big cities and near bus and train stations. “Although the National Plan of Action to Combat Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children had been approved in 2006, co-ordinated policies and programmes to deal with the hazard have yet to be implemented,” it said.

Prison: According to the report, majority of the juveniles’ under-trial were serving long terms for minor offences. It said that conditions in jails were worse and there were no special provisions for children living with their mothers. The report mentioned that there were some 70,000 children living on the streets nationwide. It said that Lahore is estimated to have 7,000 children living on the streets while in Peshawar there are a further 5,000. There are around 2,500 children in Quetta and 3,000 children in Rawalpindi are living on the streets.

Kilns: Quoting the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the report says that of more than 2,200 persons deported to Pakistan in 2007, 15 were children less than 18 years of age. The report also says that the number of children affected by the child labor and bonded labor is worsening with a rise in poverty. It mentioned that in Sahiwal, 11,000 kiln workers are younger than 16.

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U.S. Sen. Grassley: Asks for Expedited Review of Child Labor Violations at  Agriprocessors

Aug 20, 2008

Grassley Asks for Expedited Review of Child Labor Violations at Agri-processors

WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today asked the Iowa Attorney General for expedited consideration of the 57 child labor violations that have been referred to his office by the Iowa Department of Labor. Grassley sent the letter with Congressman Tom Latham.

“It’s important that any potential labor violations be considered as quickly as possible so that these young people are not living in limbo longer than necessary,” Grassley said. “It would be unfortunate for Secretary Chertoff to make decisions on their status without having a full understanding of the allegations and the importance of these children to the case.”

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United States: AMC Entertainment fined for child labor violations

By DIANE STAFFORD

The Kansas City Star, Aug 28, 2008

American Multi-Cinema Inc. has been fined $141,570 by the U.S. Department of Labor for labor law violations involving workers under age 18.

The department’s wage and hour division said Wednesday that AMC permitted teenage employees to operate dangerous equipment and to work beyond the hours and times permitted under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In addition to paying the civil penalty, the Kansas City-based movie exhibitor agreed to produce and show a public service announcement about child labor and workplace safety on all of its 4,385 screens in 296 theaters in 30 states.

Shirley Gardner, wage and hour administrator for the Midwest, said the penalty “was not insignificant,” in that these kinds of fines “are not often into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Gardner said she was pleased that AMC agreed to produce and show the public service announcement.

Sun Dee Larson, AMC director of external communications, provided the company’s official response:

“Due to our proactive cooperation during the investigation, the department of labor rewarded us with a very reasonable fine. The PSA we have developed carries an educational message in an entertaining way, and we are hopeful it will help others learn about these somewhat obscure regulations.”

The public service announcements begin appearing in theaters on Friday and are scheduled to run for four weeks.

The penalty followed investigations by the Wage and Hour Division, which has a nationwide Labor Department initiative under way to reduce workplace injuries among minors.

Gardner said theater companies have been targeted for investigations because they employ a high percentage of workers under age 21. Other theater chains also are being investigated, she said.

Wage and hour investigators found 78 AMC employees under age 18 in violation of specific federal safety rules involving trash compactors.

Investigations took place at 11 theaters in Missouri, Iowa, New Jersey and Louisiana. Gardner said no other AMC theaters needed to be involved after investigators determined that violations existed at some of the venues.

The department noted that compactor and baler operation was the most common youth employment safety violation found by its investigators in fiscal 2007 in all of its workplace investigations nationally.

The Labor Department also said that AMC failed to enforce work-hour standards for 12 employees under the age of 16. Labor laws regulate the number of hours and times of day that 14- and 15-year-olds may work. (There are fewer restrictions on employment of 16- to 18-year-olds.)

The law says 14- and 15-year-olds may work in certain occupations outside school hours, but not before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m. (or after 9 p.m. from June 1 until Labor Day). They also may not work more than three hours on a school day and 18 hours in a school week, or more than eight hours on a non-school day and 40 hours a week when school is not in session.

In fiscal 2007, the Labor Department found a national total of 3,406 minors who were employed in violation of such child labor hour standards.

In all, nearly $4.4 million in child labor law violation penalties were assessed against U.S. employers in fiscal 2007.

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Plan USA sponsors six Ghanaian Child Ambassadors in a two-week visit to the United States

 Abigail, pictured above, is one of five Ghanaian  child ambassadors visiting the U.S. for two weeks in August.

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Children on the streets is an insult to Ghanaian dignity

Joy Online, Ghana Aug 21, 2008

Nana Akufo-Addo

The flag-bearer for the New Patriotic Party, NPP, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says the daily spectacle of children standing beside the roads in our cities and hawking all manner of things when they should be in school must challenge our dignity and encourage us to action.

Delivering a speech on Tuesday on job creation at the TUC Congress, Nana Akufo-Addo said he believes children must be in school, learning to be the productive workers and citizens of tomorrow who can earn a living wage and only perform child work, which prepares the child for the future while attending school.

He stressed the need for government’s action in providing sufficient schools to educate them freely, with meals and supplies and have jobs that can pay living wages to their parents to support them without needing to put them to work so early in their lives.

According to him, the NPP government has already had a significant impact in reducing child labor through the introduction of the School Feeding Programme and the Capitation Grant that have combined to increase primary school enrolment by 30%.

Story by Jerry Tsatro Mordy (ASEMPA FM)

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Ghana: Rubber out-growers intensify campaign against child labor

By Zam R. Samin, Friday, Aug 08, 2008

THE President of the Rubber Out-growers and Agents Association of Ghana (ROAA), Nana Asaa Kofi (III), has called on members of the Association, to adhere to the crusade against child labor in the rubber growing areas of the country.

He said the National Executive Council (NEC) of the association, had resolved to appeal to all their members, in all the districts where rubber cultivation is going on, to join the crusade against child labor.

“Let us please try to respect the rules in our child labor code, and join our friends in the advanced countries to say a big no to child labor,” Nana Asaa Kofi (III) admonished.

The President made the call at an extra-ordinary general meeting of the association, which was held at Agona, in the Ahanta West District of the Western Region recently.

Aside the child labor issue, another major challenge confronting members of the association, according to the president, was the issue of stealing of cup lump by some unscrupulous members.

“Stealing of cup lump is on the ascendancy, despite the several warnings that have been given at our meetings,” he noted.

He, therefore, appealed to all members of the association, to help uncover the few bad nuts among them, to make the rubber industry in Ghana stealing-free.

Nana Kofi also expressed concern about the poor quality of cup lumps being supplied.

He advised members of the association, to refrain from acts that contribute to the poor quality of the cup lumps supplied to the factory, since it was having effect on the association.

The President announced a proposed investment club, being introduced by the association, to cushion their members, as a form of pension scheme.

He said all arrangements had been completed, and a provisional agreement to that effect had been given to a lawyer for studies, suggestions and recommendations.

Meanwhile, a 3% discount on the price of the rubber, which had been a source of worry and concern to many rubber producing farmers in the African continent, has been waived. This, the President said, would give rubber farmers in the country, an additional income of GH¢0.868, using the price of June as the basis of calculation.

It was also resolved at the meeting, attended by over 1,500 members of the association, that the productive members’ dues be increased from 0.6% to 1.5%.

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Ghana Police to help fight child labor

GBC Aug 29, 2008

The Ghana Police Service is to incorporate Child Labor issues into the training curriculum of the Police Training Schools and the Police College .  This was announced by the Coordinating Director of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit and the Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Mrs. Beatrice vib-Sanziri at the close of a four day workshop organized for forty personnel of the service. 

She said, a training manual developed by a consultant Dr. Stephen Ayidiya at the Social Work Department of the University of Ghana in collaboration with DOVVSU and the International Labor Organization will be used to that effect.  ACP Vib-Sanziri gave the assurance that the service will contribute to the Elimination of Child Labor through the institutional development to build the capacity of personnel. 

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Nigeria: Child Labor in Cocoa Industry

By Olaolu Olusina, 08.19.2008
This Day, Nigeria

With the fears that the multi-billion dollar cocoa industry may have consigned the Harkin-Engel Protocol to the dustbin of history, Olaolu Olusina writes that there seems to be no end to the suffering of the poor children working in about two million cocoa farms in West Africa.

For seven years, the world was fooled. Promises of great expectations by an industry that thrives on the sweat of poor African kid laborers have amounted to nothing. Reports of recent investigations have also indicated that the self-acclaimed and much flaunted efforts by the multi-billion dollar cocoa industry are simply a ruse.

Specifically, the  Tulane University, United States that was commissioned by the American Government to investigate the efforts made so far in its latest report, said specific actions expected to combat child and forced labor in West Africa do not really pan out on the ground.
From every indication, the stalled Harkin-Engel Protocol, a self-policing policy, voluntary agreed upon by the industry seven years ago, as a way of protecting thousands of children working in the numerous cocoa plantations of West Africa, may have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Yet, in the United States alone, big multinationals who use cocoa, the 'yellow pod' produced in West Africa, sell a whopping $13 billion worth of chocolate every year, making huge profits from the sweat of poor African kids.

It would be recalled that intense media exposure of child and forced labor in West Africa which supplies 70 per cent of the world cocoa, with 40 per cent of that coming from Cote d'Ivoire, had led to the intervention of the American Congress in 2001. Americans, no doubt, love chocolate to a fault, but were not ready to continue consuming what is regarded as 'blood chocolate'. They had therefore set in motion a move that would ensure that chocolate was produced from cocoa that are free of child slavery.

Director of Save the Children Fund in Mali, Salia Kante, had painted a gory picture of the menace. “People who are drinking cocoa and eating chocolate are drinking and eating the blood of children,” Kante had stated. Therefore,  on June 28, 2001, the American Congress through the House of Representatives  voted 291-115 to set aside funding within the Food and Drug Administration Department to develop a labeling programme for products made with cocoa.
Democrat Representative Elliot Engel who moved the motion got support from Senator Tom Harkin for the legislative action. According to Engel, “if we can have our tuna dolphin-free, we can have our chocolate slave free.” The label was therefore intended to distinguish between cocoa products made with child slave labor and those that were not.

The response of the chocolate industry to the legislative threat was swift, knowing full well the impact of such legislation on its business. Former Senators, George Mitchel and Bob Dole were hired to lobby against the bill. Though they succeeded in stopping it, the industry had to accept a compromise - the Harkin-Engel Protocol of September 19, 2001 signed in Washington.
Named after US Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Elliot Engel who championed the original legislation and later spearheaded talks with the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and the World Cocoa Foundation, the Harkin-Engel Protocol was envisioned as a self-policing policy to better identify and address abusive child labor practices in the cocoa-growing areas of West Africa. The International Labor Organization (ILO), International Union of Food and Allied Workers (IUF), the anti-slavery group, 'Free the Slaves' and the National Consumers League (NCL) were initial members of an advisory group that participated in the agreement.

These non-industries, private sector stakeholders, together with US government officials, were expected to be partners in carrying out all aspects of the protocol within the first four years with July 1, 2005 set as the initial deadline. It was an elated Representative Engel that gave a progress report on the agreement to the House on Monday, July 8, 2002, about a year after the agreement was signed.

“I am pleased with and proud of the enormous progress that has been made toward ending this terrible situation. First, let me congratulate the chocolate industry for quickly deciding to tackle this problem head on. The industry joined a number of non-governmental organizations in signing an agreement, now known as the 'Harkin-Engel Protocol', which set up a framework for dealing with the problem of child slavery in the cocoa fields.

“The protocol is a serious commitment by the stakeholders to create an historic effort to end child slavery in this industry," he said. Expressing his joy, Engel further stated that as other members listened with rapt attention: “This effort is not just the result of the United States Congress though. Our colleagues in the parliament of Great Britain have also been working on this issue.

“On May 20, 2002, the House of Commons held what we could call a special order on the specific issue of child slavery in the cocoa fields of West Africa. During the debate, the Honorable Tony Colman of Putney quoted his constituent who is an expert on the problems of child trafficking and slavery, Professor Kevin Bales, as saying “the protocol… is a very good thing. It is the first time that an industry has taken social, moral and economic responsibility for their entire product chain. The anti-slavery movement has been seeking such an agreement for 160 years.”

Engel did not stop there as he explained further: “In January of this year (2002), the Government of Ivory Coast ratified two important international labor agreements governing child labor-conventions 138 and 182 of the ILO.

“By becoming signatories to these conventions, the Government of the Ivory Coast took a huge step toward implementing responsible labor standards for children within its own border. In part, because of this step, the Bush Administration in May 2002 granted the Ivory Coast eligibility status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act,” he stressed.

While agreeing that “the problem of child slavery in West Africa is as much the responsibility of the governments there as it is our own,” Engel however affirmed: “Today, I am pleased and proud to report that Congress is a part of the movement to put an end to one of the most egregious ills in the world today—child slavery.”

But Engel and the American Congress must have been carried away, or so it seemed, by the initial enthusiasm of the cocoa industry to the protocol. Not only that, the entire world that has been watching with keen interest in anticipation of progress must have been fooled as well.
A 2002 joint study published by ILO and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) still found that an estimated 284,000 children on cocoa farms in West Africa were “involved in hazardous work, unprotected or have been trafficked,” mostly in farms in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria.

The July 1, 2005 initial deadline could not also be met due to what the industry referred to as the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire. Though the industry still expressed its commitment to the protocol, the new deadline of July 1, 2008 that was agreed upon narrowed down the certification to 50 per cent of cocoa from only Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire.

Even at that, the new deadline had come and gone like any other day. Little or nothing is on ground to show in terms of certification and the targets set seven years ago.

Not many analysts are quite surprised at the failure. They had seen the handwriting on the wall and predicted that the industry was going to miss the deadline. Just few days to July 1, Adrienne Fitch-Frankel, Fair Trade Director of Global Exchange, a human rights organization, had warned that “the industry is at risk of missing the upcoming deadline yet again.”

She stated that “the very title of the Harkin-Engel protocol commits the industry to....’immediate action for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor.’” Fitch-Frankel also lamented that “for over seven years, children have continued to languish in slavery and consumers have waited for untainted chocolate. “It is simply sad that the chocolate manufacturers have redefined the word ‘certification’ to mean 'data collection', adding "Industry even titled its 2007 version of its definition a ‘certification concept.’

Fitch-Frankel said a report funded by the US Department of Labor stated that the industry's current definition of certification is a misnomer. “What industry is currently pursuing under its own definition of certification is not truly certification that there is no abusive child labor,” she said. “It is a survey to determine the prevalence of abusive child labor.”

However, rising to the defense of the cocoa industry was Emmanuel Owusu-Manu, a cocoa specialist and economist with the Cocoa Producers Alliance (COPAL), an inter-governmental organization comprising 10 cocoa-producing countries. He told THISDAY at the headquarters of COPAL in Lagos that rights activists are taking the issue too far. He stated that distinction should be made between ‘child labor’ and ‘child work’, saying what is being termed as 'child labor' in most cases is actually 'child work," a situation where children help their parents on the farms.
Owusu-Manu who disclosed that he grew up in Tafoe, a cocoa-growing community in Ghana, asked: “How much work can a child really do on a cocoa farm?” saying   “If people don't understand how cocoa is being farmed, it is easy to believe that children are involved.”

He said most of the cocoa-growing communities in Ghana have organized ‘gangs’ responsible for various assignments in the production chain. He stated that “aside the farmers and their families, if you bring any other person to do their job, such person will be resisted.”

But in the face of the intense media campaign and obvious evidence of the menace, Owusu-Manu said though nobody can dispute that child labor exists, it is in isolated cases. “Agreed that child labor exist in the fishing industry and is more pronounced, the case of the cocoa industry is simply being exaggerated,” he said. “I don't know what happens in Cote d'Ivoire, but in Ghana and Nigeria, it is in isolated cases.”

According to him, “the fact that we have isolated cases of an issue does not mean that things are bad,” as he stressed that “even in advanced countries, we still have isolated cases.” He nonetheless asked: “Why would anybody want to use child labor that is cheap?” adding “those who know about cocoa won’t bring children into the farm because you won't get anything out of them. It becomes an economic issue and as such cannot be sustainable.” He disclosed that “about 2005, IITA in Ibadan, Nigeria did a report on child labor and came out to say that the trend is insignificant, noting that children only work in hazardous conditions.” The COPAL official also told THISDAY that “COPAL members have ratified ILO (182) Convention regarding children rights and every two years, every country gives a written report to the ILO on progress made.

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Senegal: Over a million risk child labor in Senegal

Afrol News, 25 August - Child labor has become an important phenomenon in Senegal where over a million children [36% of children] were engaged economic activities during the past twelve months, national child labor survey revealed.

According to the published report, 1, 378,724 of the country's total 3, 759,074 children between 5-17 years were involved in child labor.

Some 2.1 million children of the same age bracket were involved in economic activities in 2004.

The authors of the report said majority of the child workers have been tempted by household poverty and illiteracy. Most of the children work in agriculture, livestock, forestry and fisheries sectors.

More than 82% of the children, mostly girls, were unpaid family workers without pay.

Forced child labor is proven to be common in the regions of Tambacounda, Louga and Fatick where children do hard labor for 28 hours a week.

While domestic children workers work for more than 50 hours per week, those in transport, manufacturing and primary sectors spend 47.9, 42.3 and 26.8 hours, respectively.

Close to 5.3 millions of Senegal's total population of 11 million inhabitants are children under 17 years.

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Child labor used to sell BBC magazines in Delhi

Dean Nelson, Sunday Times, UK, Aug 24, 2008

The BBC is profiting from child labor in India where boys as young as eight are being forced by gangs to sell Top Gear and Good Homes magazines, for as little as 12p a day. According to campaigners, the children, who are sold by their families for about £12.50, suffer abuse at the hands of gangsters who control the roadside pitches where they hawk magazines.

Last week The Sunday Times interviewed young boys selling BBC magazines at road junctions throughout Delhi.

They had left their farming families in the northeastern state of Bihar after drought had ruined their crops, they said, and were now working punishing 12-hour days.

Top Gear magazine was launched in India in 2005. The BBC formed a joint venture with the Times of India group to create Worldwide Media, India’s biggest magazine publisher, which also produces Good Homes magazine.

The publications are sold on bookstalls for about £1 each, but it is a ferociously competitive market and the battle for readers is fought on the main roads in big cities.

Retailers appointed by the joint venture hire distributors, who in turn employ gangs who use trafficked children to sell to motorists.

They include Sanjay, aged nine, who was last week selling both magazines at Delhi’s busy Moolchand flyover. He said he had come to the city two months ago with his 11-year-old brother, after drought ruined his parents’ rice crop in Bihar. He said he earned 60p-75p a day.

His fellow magazine seller, Anand, said that on an average day he sold four magazines and received five rupees (6p) per copy. “Yesterday I earned 50 rupees [60p], but today just 10 [12p],” he said.

The Indian Save the Children foundation raided one of Delhi’s junctions and rescued 13 children selling magazines earlier this year.

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India refuses to accept WB terms for SSA loan

Aug 22nd, 2008, 0238 hrs IST, Akshaya Mukul, TNN

NEW DELHI: The recent $600 million (Rs 2,400 crore) World Bank loan for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, that has come after nearly one-and-a-half years of negotiations, is among the rare examples of India refusing to let the Bank micromanage flagship programmes and inflict its highly centralized system on the country.

Officials of department of economic affairs said this negotiation should become a template for future loans for other flagship programmes. Negotiations for the loan, taken entirely on Indian terms, started in January 2007, went through several low phases and by last December, matters came to a head and it looked as if loan agreement would not happen.

Sources said Indian officials, from DEA and HRD ministry, while refusing to toe the World Bank conditions, were following the principles laid out in the Paris declaration on aid effectiveness. The declaration stresses that donors should align its support on partner countries' national development strategies.

The problem for Indian team began when World Bank insisted it would like to be part of internal meetings of some components of SSA. The Bank also wanted to impose its procurement system.

"Basically, WB showed an intolerance for the national system," a source said, adding that the Bank's Rs 2,400 crore loan was too small an amount for a programme like SSA with an annual outlay of Rs 13,000 crore.

While sticking to its stand, the Indian team argued that there was a full fledged system of implementation within the country's federal structure. Also, there was a foolproof financial system. "India's stand was that the country's system will prevail," a source said.

As for procurement system, the Indian stand was that there were detailed Central Vigilance Commission guidelines for procurement that would prevail. Indians also reminded WB how it had accepted Indian conditions for the first phase of SSA.

The funding, which is for three years, is aimed at improving SSA's quality, augment facilities in upper primary classes and complete the agenda of equity and retention of students.

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Court concerned over child labor in the capital, its own premises

IANS, Aug 20, 2008

New Delhi, Aug 20 (IANS) Expressing concern over the increasing number of child laborers in the capital, the Delhi High Court Wednesday pulled up some shop owners in its own premises for employing children.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S. Muralidhar made these observations while hearing a public interest petition on rehabilitation of child laborers in the city.

It is very unfortunate that we are passing orders against other units whereas children are working in the court premises,’ the judges said.

‘We should begin charity at home,’ the bench observed and asked the labor department to submit by Aug 27 a comprehensive report on the situation over the past five years.

The bench was hearing a petition by the All India Bhrashtachar Virodhi Sanstha, an NGO, seeking direction to the government for bringing a mechanism to rehabilitate rescued child workers.

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State supplying child laborers

Statesman News Service

KOLKATA, Aug 19: A human trafficking racket has now started supplying children to other states, who would be turned to child laborers. Children are being supplied to Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Haryana as these states have an increasing demand for bonded child laborers.

Those working hard to stop this inhuman practice, have requested the state and city police authorities to keep a close watch on suspected traffickers and launch a crackdown on syndicates involved in supplying bonded child laborers to other states. Widespread poverty and easy availability of child labor in West Bengal and other eastern states has led to a rise in demand of bonded labors in North Indian states, they said. It was learnt that members of human trafficking rackets send child laborers through trains from Howrah and Sealdah railway stations. Several non governmental organizations have lodged complaints about a rise in human trafficking on the city outskirts and in North and South 24-Parganas to both city and state police authorities.

According to a report prepared by Socio Legal Aid Research and Training Centre (SLART) ~ an NGO working to stop human trafficking ~ West Bengal has become one of the top five states in the country from where children from economically weak families are trafficked to factories in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana to meet the excess demand of bonded child laborers.
Though employing a child is prohibited by the Child Labor Prohibition and Regulation Act 1986, children are being engaged in hazardous work at factories in these states.

“Since child labor is easily available in some districts in West Bengal due to high poverty level, members of human trafficking rackets have now started trafficking children from costal and bordering districts to factories in other states. Despite massive campaigns against human trafficking and strong action initiated by police to stop menace of traffickers, much success couldn't be achieved due to some social evils such as poverty and unemployment. Apart from supplying bonded child labor to factories, traffickers also send young girls to brothels in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune," Mr Manabendra Mondal, executive director, SLART, said.

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Pune: Balsena: Salute child power

The name conjures images of 'bal Hanumans' waging a war against demons, fighting for justice and spreading joy, and the imagery is not far from reality.

Balsena, a city organization of, for and by children, works for the upliftment and resolution of their issues. Started in 2006 after the roaring success of a workshop, the organization works with a difference to make a difference. Handled completely by the mini-masterminds, it gives children from all walks of life a platform to voice their opinions, problems and what they really want from a world which will be theirs tomorrow.

Anuradha Sahastrabuddhe, who runs the helpline Childline through her NGO Dnyana Devi, had organized a workshop for kids from different strata of the society some two years back. The idea was to help them voice their problems before prominent authorities, like the police, the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited, the rickshaw drivers, heads of school, the media etc. It was at this meeting that she realized that children had a lot of issues and since no appropriate action would be taken, they remained unsolved. This realization led to the birth of Balsena.

"On our first meeting, we not only invited school students but also children from slums and railway stations," says Sahastrabuddhe, executive director of Dnyana Devi. The first meeting was attended by 70 children and the number has increased four folds since then, today the total strength of Balsena stands at 250 in the city.

While there's no particular age group that a student has to belong to in order to be a member, but all members are of standard IV and above. Balsena has its 'sainiks' in schools, railway stations and even observation and juvenile homes. The army stands strong with a common resolve of trying to make things better for a rosier tomorrow.

"Be it problems at the school or in the neighborhood, these members not only talk to the concerned authorities but also try and come up with a reasonable solution for the same. And they do all this on their own, all we do is guide them," says Sahastrabuddhe with pride.

However, the start wasn't smooth at all as not everyone was receptive to the idea of children voicing their grievances. "While the kids love doing it purely because they see it as a way of improving conditions and circumstances, the adults do no take them seriously. In fact, in the beginning the teachers opposed it as they thought that children were against them and their authority," she explains, adding that it was only after the children got down to doing their job that teachers realized the advantage of having a child voice his/her concerns and those of his peers' .

Since its inception, Balsena has taken up various projects, listing issues and then prioritizing them. "The children had some problems with the bus transport system in the city, which was duly conveyed to the concerned authority upon which the issue was taken up in the form of a project," she says.

She also cites some other success stories like the issue of child labor being practiced in Vishrantwadi. "All the shopkeepers did not agree to our request to stop employing children but we were gratified when a majority of them agreed," Sahastrabuddhe says.

Another success story of the Balsena is their exposure of the financial irregularities in a municipal school that was forcing girl students to dropout resulting in cases of child marriage. But there is more that has to be done Sahastrabuddhe states. "There is no point in simply declaring support for the UN charter for child rights, we need to empower our children, helping them stand up for their rights and support them in their fight against injustice," she says.

With the Tilak Zone chapter operating in the city and another at the Shivajinagar Observation Home, two other chapters including one in Camp and one in Kothrud are expected to start functioning over the next few months.

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Building rights

Gethin Chamberlain, Aug 20, 2008

The pregnancy came all too easily. Monica was 13, and the man in question was her overseer at the brick kiln where she worked about 40km north of the booming Indian mega-city of Kolkata. More than twice her age and married with two children of his own, he was the son of the kiln owner. He had smiled at her as she trotted past him every day, carrying on her head the rough clay bricks shaped from river mud which she would deposit in the kiln to be baked into the building blocks of Kolkata’s expansion.

An overseer sifts through tokens handed out to show how many bricks the children have delivered. Gethin Chamberlain

For each load of eight bricks she carried, he handed her a small plastic token. At the end of the week, the tokens would be tallied up, and Monica and the other girls feeding the furnace would be allocated a few rupees each. For every 1,000 bricks they carried, most girls received 60 rupees (Dh5).

Girls carry bricks at the Asha kiln. The Irish aid agency Goal says Kolkata's kilns are “akin to a modern form of slavery”. Gethin Chamberlain for The National But not Monica. Sometimes when she held out her hand for a token, the overseer, or munshi as they are known, would press more than one plastic disc into her palm. She would smile and say nothing; it made her happy, though she knew there would be a price to pay. Later, in the evening, the munshi would seek her out in one of the ramshackle longhouses that the workers called home.
“In the evenings there is nothing to do,” she says quietly. “We were given alcohol [a local spirit made from sugar cane]. I drank some of the alcohol and then he wanted to be involved with me...” She looks down shyly.

There was no question of keeping the baby. An abortion was quietly arranged. There were 15 such terminations among the girls working at her kiln last year alone. A report for the Irish aid agency Goal says the kilns are “akin to a modern form of slavery” where “sexual exploitation, particularly of adolescent girls, is common and is frequently a precondition for the allocation of work”.

Had she received the money she was due, Monica might have considered it a price worth paying. Yet it turned out to have been for nothing, for she and most of the other girls have had little education, and counting the tokens they received was beyond them.

In an environment where knowledge is power and power is something to be abused, they relied on their masters to tell them what they were owed. At the end of the nine months she spent at the kiln last year, she had just 900 rupees (Dh77) to show for her efforts. The owner said she had used up the rest on food and accommodation.

Kolkata is in the grip of a building boom as the mega-city expands dramatically – a boom driven in part by an influx of international capital. Major companies are pouring into Kolkata. Coca-Cola has a bottling plant there; IBM and General Electric are also in place. The information technology giant Infosys is planning a 36 hectare campus employing more than 20,000 people and the bank HSBC has invested in two electronic data processing operations in the city.

ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company, wants to build a state-of-the-art research and development base, while Siemens is planning a major expansion. In July, BP sealed a $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) deal with Spice Energy, which secured funding from Dubai Investment Group, to dismantle a German refinery and rebuild it outside Kolkata to handle lower quality crude oil.

The Indian government has also been courting Arab investment for the mega-city programme. Earlier this year, CEOs from 100 companies from 13 Arab countries took part in a conference to discuss multibillion dollar investment in real estate and infrastructure projects in a number of cities, including Kolkata.

There is no evidence to suggest that any of these companies are aware of the practice.

The result is a construction industry desperate for bricks and a brick industry desperate to make as much money as possible from the boom. Owners have turned to child labor to deliver maximum production for minimal cost. About 1.5 million people work in the brick industry in the region; a third of those are children aged 12 to 18 who have traveled there alone.

Children as young as six mould the clay dredged from the river beds and banks; girls as young as 10 work from 6.00am carrying them into the kilns. The girls migrate annually from their villages to the kilns, some with their parents, some alone, and stay there for about nine months.

Many miss out on any form of education; half are illiterate. Alarmed by that, and by the routine sexual exploitation – in one study, one third of girls and 12 per cent of boys reported that they had been abused – and by the lack of educational opportunities, aid agencies have moved in.

But instead of tackling the owners head on, they are trying a different tack; persuading the bosses to give the children time off between shifts to go to school.

The children still have to work, but the education they receive is at least making their lives easier. Basic numeracy means that at the end of the week, when the munshis come to pay them, they now know how many bricks they have carried and how much they are owed.

There is a problem with this. Though about 600 children aged between six and 14 work in the 15 kilns involved in the project, most mixing mud for the bricks for less than eight rupees (73 fils) for every 10,000 bricks they make, the employment of children below the age of 14 is banned in India. If the authorities were to apply the letter of the law, the kilns would be shut down.

Aware that it is operating on the very edge of legality, Goal it argues that working with the owners is the only way to make a difference. There is little political will to translate the law into action, it concludes.

“Brick kiln owners are, first and foremost, business people. Their motivation is profit. Child labor in the current brick production scenario provides the owners with both optimal production and minimal cost opportunities. Appealing to [their] better nature will yield few results,” says Goal’s report.

Better, the aid workers argue, to work with the owners and try to convince them that it makes good business sense to adopt modern technology, reducing the need for child labor.

In the meantime, if they can lean on the owners and persuade them to let the children have some form of education, they argue, then at least they are giving them a chance of a future and the tools with which to fight for what is rightfully theirs.

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The countryside of West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas region, where the bricks are made, is dotted with large prawn farming lakes. The chimneys of the kilns poke up, thin and black, into an overcast sky. Only one, Asha Brick Manufacturing, has smoke coming from it; the fires in the rest are out, the monsoon having put an end to brick making for a couple of months.

At the Asha kiln, the employees are racing to get the last bricks into the kiln before they are ruined by the rain. The school is a white painted brick building in the shadow of the kiln, a rough concrete floor covered by a rug. There are posters of animals on the walls; a polar bear, a whale, an elephant and a crocodile. The teachers are provided by a partner agency working with Goal, the Narayatntala Mass Communication Society. They are trained as teachers, paid for by the charity and originate from the area.

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It is 2.00pm and the older children have gone back to work. Outside, nine-year-old Sunu stands on a pile of brick shards with his sister Raji, four months old, on his back. He wakes at 7.00am and plays with his four brothers and sisters and takes care of them while their mother carries bricks to the furnace. He takes the baby to her when she cries.

Sunu watches as, from around the corner of a low building next to a large pool, girls emerge carrying the grey moulded clay bricks on their heads. The older women carry 10, the younger ones eight. They balance them on a pad on their heads, moving quickly and smoothly, along the brick dust path that runs alongside the edge of the oval hollow at the centre of which stands the tall, blackened, chimney belching black smoke out over the surrounding countryside.

They walk in through a gap in the brick walls, deposit the bricks in a stack with carefully located gaps to ensure the correct circulation of air, and sashay back out to collect a token from the deaf and dumb munshi who sits watching them go by.

The girls walk quickly, just short of breaking into a run. Those who the munshi favors get a smile and beam back. One girl palms two tokens and trots off. She can be no more than 10 years old.

The kiln is lit in December and the fire slowly moves round. Those bricks that have been baked are allowed to cool then removed, new ones constantly added. At the height of the production, they can bake 20,000 bricks a day.

At the entrance to the track that leads to the kiln, a group of women and very young children are squatting by the roadside. There are two tiny babies. The women worked until last week and now they wait listlessly for their money. They travelled to the kiln nine months ago from the state of Jharkhand, on West Bengal’s western border, to join the 300 others working at the kiln. Their villages are based on agriculture, but there is never enough work. The children sit in the brick dust by the roadside. Every now and again, a lorry thunders past, kicking up a few stones, before silence descends again.

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Pelong thinks she is 32, though she is not sure. She looks much older. She holds on to Seeta, 13 months old, one of her three surviving children. Four others died.

“From childhood I have been earning money for my family,” she says. “I have never been to school. We are from a small village. My family were farm workers and had a small piece of land. I got married at 13, then we started migrating for work. I have been working in the brick kilns for 10 years, nine months here every year. It is hard work.”

They should earn about 9,000 rupees for nine months work, six days a week; men earn an average of 70 rupees a day (Dh5.9), women 40 rupees (Dh3.4). But Pelong has no idea how much she should be due; it depends on how many bricks she carried and she cannot count. The labor contractor loaned her 520 rupees to get there and now he says the interest on it means she is not owed any money at the end of her nine month stint. “But I do get free wood for the cooking,” she adds.

Dulary, about 35, has two children, Chato, a boy of seven and Puja, a girl of 14. She lives with the others near the kiln, in the longhouses separated by mud, with washing strung between the buildings and firewood piled on the roofs. Puja disappeared about a month ago. Dulary thinks she met a boy and is now married. She has no way of finding out. The aid workers think she has been trafficked.

Outside the office, the owner, SK Din Mohammed, 54, leans against the wall. He is well dressed in a clean white shirt, with a neat greying beard and thinning dark hair. He has owned the business for 10 years and is a member of the local administration.

He breaks off to tell the others, who have gathered to watch, to get on with their work. The rains are coming and already 600,000 bricks have been wasted. They lie, damp and useless, piled up around the kiln.

He gets 4.5 rupees per brick for the best quality, 4 for the next and 3.5 for the rest. He sells about four million bricks every year.

“The people enjoy working for me,” he says. “The children come from a poor state. No one educates them there but at least here they have an opportunity to learn.”

There are no children working under the age of 14, he says. “The children you see are helping their families. They are not working.”

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The aid agency hopes its efforts will bring literacy levels up to 80 per cent by 2010. But Bhuwan Ribhu, lawyer for The Global March Against Child Labor, says they are deluding themselves.

“I think it is nonsense,” he said. “They are promoting these crimes by not raising their voices against them. They should be going after the overseers. If a child is not getting the minimum wage, if the girls are being exploited, they are working as slaves. The government should be forced to open schools and the kilns should be shut down.”

At the entrance to the kiln, Monica skips barefoot through the gap in the stack of bricks, stretches out her pale palm to grab the blue token from the hand of the munshi. Their eyes meet for a moment and she giggles before disappearing off down the path. Nothing is said; nothing needs to be said. Later on, they might meet up. The nights are long. And tomorrow her pile of counters will grow a little higher than those of the other girls. Monica will hope that the price this year is not too high to pay.

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Nepal: Six kids rescued from Rautahat

Gorkhapatra, Aug 22, 2008
 
Parsa, Aug 22: The Cross-border Woman and Child Trafficking Awareness Post in Raxaul has rescued six children from Rautahat who were being smuggled to India. The rescued kids were handed over to parsa district police office.

The post also arrested three persons involved in child trafficking and filed a case against them.

All the rescued kids are from 10 to 14 years of age. They rescued kids are Hoda Tullah (12) of Laxaminiya-9, Santosh Saha (14) of Gamhariya-1, Sheikh Javed (10) and Mahammad Nausad (12) of Gamhariya-4, and Mohammad Aftab (14) and Sathi Ahmed of Gamhariya-2.

The arrested persons are Sheikh Lalbabu of Gamhariya-8, Sheikh Aftab of Gamhariya-5 and Hakikul Rahman of Gamhariya-2. The arrested are under the control of Indian police. The arrested said the kids were being taken to India for work but the post said the kids were rescued as they faced a risk of organ theft.

Meanwhile, among the incidents of sexual abuse occurred during last six months in Nepal, children below 16 comprised 64 percent, according to a report.

Similarly, nearly 9 per cent have been incest victims. Such figures were made public by a half-yearly report of the CIWIN on ‘Child Rights Condition in Nepal-2008’, here yesterday.

Altogether 3,584 cases of child rights violation, including exploitation of child labor, child-death, disappearing children, child-abuse, child molestation, child trafficking, forced prostitution, children in conflict among others were recorded by the CIWIN.

Situation of the school children is also miserable. Among the incidents of mistreatment of children, 16 percent are the incidents of physical and mental harassment to school children.

During the period, 55 children were kept in custody. Among them, 49 were bound to stay in jail as their parents were imprisoned.

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Here is a unique opportunity to help rescue, rehabilitate and educate children engaged in the worst forms of child labor, this academic year. Please consider giving a one-time donation of $300 to make possible the raid and rescue of 10 children from forced labor in India! With a 'recurring donation' of $55/month, you can provide 1 child rescued from forced labor with food, shelter, education and vocational training in a rehabilitation center.

Or, send a child from the brick kilns or shoe factories to school in Pakistan. With a 'recurring gift' of only $33/month (or a one-time donation of $396/year), you will provide a child with school supplies, textbooks, a daily meal, and a uniform! Do you know that some Americans spend more than $30/month on dyeing their hair?! With a generous recurring donation of $132/month, you can support 1 teacher of these children.

Please share this letter with friends or family members who might be interested in donating to this very just cause.

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