AMMAN // Eyad Shaaban’s hands and face are greasy. He is lying underneath a vehicle fixing a tyre in a car repair shop on the outskirts of Amman.

“I have been working for the past two years. I quit school because I wanted to help my family,” said Eyad, who is 14

Eyad earns US$50 (Dh183) a week, and for a family of nine including his parents, every penny counts. “I give all the money that I make to my father.”

While most teenagers his age go to school, Eyad works from 9am to 5.30pm six days a week.

For nearly 33,000 children, child labour is a fact of life in Jordan, a 2007-2008 survey by the department of statistics showed. Children, mostly males between five and 17, take up jobs in repair shops, agriculture and construction, or work as blacksmiths, carpenters and rubbish collectors. They are often exploited, paid low wages and are at risk of injury from heavy machinery, noise pollution, poor lighting and exposure to chemicals.

Under Jordanian law, including international child conventions the country has ratified, children under 16 are not allowed to work; the age limit is 18 for those taking hazardous jobs that involve exposure to chemicals. Employers caught violating the law by hiring underage children, or forcing those over 16 to work more than six hours a day without a break, face fines that range from 100 dinars to 500 dinars (Dh520 to 2,600) and are doubled if they are repeated. 

According to a survey by the ministry of labour on the worst forms of child labour, published in December 2006, 13 per cent of 387 children were subjected to conditions that put their physical and mental health at risk. More than 16 per cent earned just $15 to $75 a month, well below the national minimum wage. The minimum wage was raised this year to $210 from $155 a month.

Child labour in Jordan is so worrying that Queen Rania took a public stance against it last month saying the statistics are unacceptable. “This is a big challenge that should be dealt with in a firm manner.” 

But part of the problem is lax enforcement, including those laws that stipulate children should attend school until grade 10, or age 15. Last year it was estimated that four in 1,000 children left school early. 

Economic hardship is another contributor. In a country of nearly six million citizens, 14.7 per cent live in poverty, earning less than US$800 a year.

“Two-thirds of students drop out of school because they want to help their families out,” said Hussein al Khozahe, a sociologist and an expert in developmental studies at the Al Balqa Applied University. “The vast majority of the workforce in Jordan earns less than $450 a month. Even with $900 one can hardly maintain an acceptable living standard.” 

On average, children work 42 hours a week mostly to support their families, the government survey said. 

It is also a common sight to see children working as street vendors and fruit and vegetable pickers. At times, children scavenge from dumps looking for metal scraps they can sell.

“I have been working for a year helping people out by carrying vegetables to their cars,” said Rashed, 10, who works so that he can contribute to the family income. 

Most days, after school and on holidays, he rushes to a nearby vegetable market and carries plastic bags full of fruit and vegetables to customers’ cars, seemingly untroubled by the heavy weight. He earns about $7 a day from thankful customers. 

Jordan has intensified its efforts to fight child labour, ranging from establishing a child labour unit, created in 2001 to monitor the situation of children employed, to adopting a 10-year national plan in 2004 that seeks to eliminate the worst forms of child labour by the end of 2013 and cut down on the number of children under 16 working.

The government is also making efforts to rehabilitate child labourers between nine and 17 years under a four-year, US$4-million, US government-funded development initiative that began in late 2008. The Combating Exploitive Child Labour through Education (CECLE) initiative is implemented by the CHF International and Questscope Fund for Social Development, a British non-governmental organisation operating in the field of social development, the National Council for Family Affairs and the ministry of labour. 

“We aim to withdraw 4,000 children from the worst forms of child labour that include more than six hours of work a day in jobs that are physically draining and that subject children to psychological abuse that hinders their future development. It also deprives children of education. We also want to prevent another 4,000 from getting involved in exploitive labour, particularly those who live in heavily populated industrial areas,” said Salma Atiyeh, the programme director of CECLE.

“We want to help eliminate child labour through education and provide other supportive activities to children who are involved or at risk of becoming involved in child labour.

“For example, if a 13-year-old child quits school for one year, we can re-enrol him in formal education. But for those who skipped school for three years and are exploited by their employers, they are provided with non-formal education which includes maths and Arabic and ensures that they socialise with their peers because they have been out of touch.”

The challenge, however, is to keep the children in the programme, Ms Atiyeh said.

“Children do not work because they want to. It is because they are in need and they want to support their families. There are children who are responsible for their brothers and sisters. Therefore, we are trying to engage the private sector … and we need the support of all government agencies concerned and their co-ordination is greatly needed to ensure the sustainability of this initiative.”

smaayeh@thenational.ae

29-09-2009)
HCM CITY — Harsher punishments should be meted out to those who exploit children, according to Le Thi Xuan Lang, deputy chief inspector of HCM City’s Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (DoLISA).

Lang said the current fine levels were woefully inadequate to deter child exploitation.

Parents who forced their children to do excessive work or work that could be harmful to their health face fines ranging from VND500,000 (US$27) to VND1 million ($54). They would face fines of VND1-5 million ($54-270) if they exposed their children to physical abuse or harmful substances.

Lang said fines should be three or four times higher than the current levels and jail terms imposed for the most serious offences.

The number of underage children working to earn money for their families is increasing and it is traditional in remote areas for parents to send their children out to work.

Lang attributed the problem to poverty and lack of knowledge, adding that homeless children were most at risk of maltreatment.

According to an inspection conducted by DoLISA from March to July this year in 24 communes and districts in HCM City, 62 out of 173 inspected production units were using child labour, most of whom came from Tan Binh and Binh Tan districts. A garment maker in Tan Phu District forced children to do tailoring work from 6.30am until midnight with less than one-hour break in the afternoon.

Moreover, the 30sq.m room where 13 children worked and slept had no windows. The lighting system was also bad, making operating sewing machines hazardous.

Nguyen Mai Oanh from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said it was high time the authorities cracked down on the exploitation of children.

Laws on child protection, according to Lang, should be more specific to the many hundreds of ways companies get round the child-protection law.

"When inspected, most firm owners claimed that they were employing their relatives’ children because their families had knowingly sent them to work. Few possessed ID cards, which meant inspectors found it hard to determine if the children were of working age," she said.

Over 96 per cent of the children were employed by word of mouth without official documentation. DoLISA also found that those that had filed applications forms had had them filled in by relatives.

Lang said the minimum working age should be raised from 15 to 16 and that children should not have to work more than seven hours a day.

"Many employers are making use of the regulation to abuse children who are not strong enough to do the work," Lang said.

Over 75 per cent of employees working in craft workshops, or as mechanics and domestics are children. 47.6 per cent of these are aged 13 to 15, while 4.7 per cent are under 13, according to figures provided by DoLISA inspectors.

Lang said there were too few inspectors to monitor child exploitation.

"It is common to have just one official managing family planning, demographics and children’s rights in many districts nowadays," she said.

According to DoLISA’s last inspection, 69.4 per cent of firms failed to have business licences, 85.5 per cent had no records of the number of employees they had and 98.8 per cent had no social insurance.

Lang said the department would conduct more spot checks on firms and punish those that infringed the child-protection law. — VNS

http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=01OWN290909

Monday, 28th September, 2009

A total of 8,286 child abuse cases were reported to the Police countrywide between January and April this year. About one-third of them were defilement cases.These are some of the findings in a report by the African Network for Prevention Against Child Abuse and Neglect released yesterday. 

Remarkable is that 99 cases of child trafficking were reported in the first four months of 2009. Of those, 66 occurred in mid-western region. 

The report does not say where the children were taken. However, of the seven complaints the organisation received, it found that “most involved children being trafficked to Kenya and also from rural to urban areas with a promise of good education.” 

In addition, there were almost 1,300 cases of child disappearance, some 1,000 cases of child stealing, 524 cases of kidnap and 317 child murders. Other complaints included child torture, assault, neglect and desertion. 

The southwestern region registered the highest number of child abuse complaints, particularly defilement, followed by the southern and western regions and Kampala. Eastern and southeastern regions had the lowest incidences of child abuse. 

Both child stealing and kidnap were the most prevalent in the southern and western regions and the lowest in the east. 

Child murder was the highest in the south western region with 155 cases reported, followed by northwestern (100). Western Uganda also led in child neglect, desertion and torture. 

The organisation’s programme coordinator, Anslem Wandega, stressed that over 1,200 children disappeared earlier this year and the Police have not traced them up to now. 

Since some children are suspected to have become victims of child sacrifice, Wandega asked the Government to come up with a strong law on traditional doctors. “The Government should amend the Witchcraft Act to differentiate between the roles of traditional healers and weed out the quacks,” the report says. 

“The Government should also develop a law on child sacrifice to counter the complex nature of the offences.” 

Wandega also asked the President to sign the Trafficking in Persons Act, which was passed by Parliament, to control the trafficking of children. 

In a bid to reduce other cases of abuse, the network has asked the Government to pass the Domestic Violence Bill, construct child protection units at every Police station and make birth registration free and compulsory.