Child Labour Problem & Intervention Programs In Developing Countries

Tarih: 01. 01. 1999 | Kategori: Çocuk Emeği, Yazıları

FISEK INSTITUTE
Science and Action Foundation
for Child Labour
http : // www.fisek.org

Worst forms of child labour

International Labour Organization
(Convention Concerning the Prohibition & Immidiate Action
for the Elimination of the Worst forms of Child Labour – Conv.182 / 1999)

All forms of slavery and practices
Similar to slavery such as the sale and trafficking of children,
Forced or compulsory labour,
Debt bondage and serfdom,
The use, engagement or offering of a child in illegal activities, for prostitution, production of pornography or pornographic performances,
Hazardous works.

The two ominous problems of the developing countries are poverty and lack of tools to combat it. Our surveys reveal that economic needs and uncertainties about the future are the most important factors driving children to working life at very early ages. Another factor which pushes children to work is unemployment or restraints on the creation of new jobs. The one of our field studies, we asked the children why they worked. The answers we receieved were impressive.
(Yansı 1)

The reasons why young girls and boys startworking at a very early age different. Girls start working for economic considerations. When they marry, they quit working. Boys start working for premature vocational training, so they can find employment when they reach maturity, so as to become the “breadwinner” of the family.

Thus, leaving aside the most intolerable forms of employment (Yansı 2) most children state that it is their own choice to work. In any case, they have no other choice. (Yansı 3)

As can be observed, a majority of child workers start working voluntarily. Not because they are forced to do so, but, because, they accept the facts-of-life. In adulthood, holding a decent job which brings enough to make a fair living and which does not pose any health threat is unfortunately a dream which may come true only for a small minority of the children of the developing world.
All people, in developing countries, have a dream. Respect for human values, irrespective of age. There are certain indicators of what is, and should be. If one of them is lacking, the others cannot be attained. For this very simple reason, all of the above-mentioned are a “composite index”.
(Yansı 4)

That is what we define as the “lack of tools to combat poverty.” Since there is no help from the society in this struggle, each individual has to find his or her own way. And indeed, that is what the child actually does starting from very early ages.
To leave people, irrespective of age, alone and unprotected, is a loss and great cost to society. If people are forced to defend, and look after themselves, with no help from society, the losses and costs shall be too great. (Yansı 12)

CHILD LABOUR
from the standpoint of the child is an indicator of

Helplessness and
Hopelessness.

CHILD LABOUR
from the standpoint of the society is an indicator of

Helplessness and
Hopelessness.

CHILD LABOUR

Composite Index of
Respect for Human Values

	Social security		Health


Legally pursue rights & freely organize		Democracy		Right to work & full-employment


	Education & Enlightment		Level of income

Children’s Reasons for Working

Reasons	Children’s Number	View Percentage
Economic contribution	65	29.4%
Vocational training	79	35.7 %
Instead of do nothing	13	5.9 %
Dislike formal learning	47	21.3 %
Family pressure	17	7.7 %
TOPLAM	221	100.0 %

Difference Between Children’s Reasons for Working due to Gender

Reason	Kız		Erkek		TOP
Economic Contribution to family	48	54%	15	18%	63	37%
Vocational Training	41	46%	67	82%	108	63%
Total	89		82		171

(Two Reasons are Foremost)

3
BASIC INDICATORS OF
A PEACEFUL WORKING ENVIRONMENT

Voluntary Entrance to the Work-Force
Low Rate of Job Turn-Over
Low Wish to Return to Formal Education

Voluntary Entrance to the Work-Force

İSTANBUL

ANKARA

Job Turn-Over of Working Children

İSTANBUL

ANKARA

Wish to Return to Formal Education

İSTANBUL&

ANKARA

WHAT IS THE SOCIAL COST OF CHILD EMPLOYMENT?

Early child employment and withdrawing from education deprive the community of high quality labor force in the future.
Children bear difficulties, unfavorable conditions and disgraces in working life for the sake of setting up their own job in the future. This will lead a country profile made up of mostly small scale enterprises managed by low educated people.
Only low technology allows child employment. Thus, the community encounters low productivity, high energy consumption, environmental pollution, low standards and quality.
Working children has to produce sources for the public while other children of the same age benefit from these sources, go to school or play in the parks. Working children can not go to school and have no time to play. This is inequity.
As part of their human rights, children have the right to eat, to play, to go to school and to develop their personalities freely. If they leave there aside and start to work a good basis for violating other human rights is also prepared.
Child employment has a close influence on the employment status and job market of the country. It is both the reason and the outcome of unemployment.
Working children have to survive among the adults and are far from other children of the same age from the beginning. Since they feel alone and insecure and do not know solidarity and working together; they will unlikely be participating in organized struggle and demand for rights either as an employer or an employee in the future.

From the standpoint of child workers, there is one thing that the child does not know or see: what he or she losses while working. First of all, childhood is lost. The child has to behave as adults in work discipline throughout longer and longer working hours. What is actually lost is personality, self-confidence and imaginative power which could have been built otherwise through plays and companionship with peers.

We studied the spare-time activities and friendship relations of child-workers.

In their spare times, they either watch television, or walk with their close friends
Working children, and/or school-children choose to associate only with their counterparts. Being of different worlds, they have problems of communicating with one another.
Due to the extension of working-hours, their social activities are definitely very constricted. As a consequence, their ability to organize, join forces, work together, and share, are extremely limited – to the extent of non-existence.

Since working environments lack even those vital conditions necessary for adult workers, child workers further face the risk of hearing loss due to noise, lung diseases caused by dusty-smoky environments, blood and nervous system damages stemming from such materials as paint, thinner, etc. and emergence of genetoxicity from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. So, health is another loss.
(Yansı 6)

2
BASIC INDICATORS
IN EVALUATING THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT OF CHILD LABOUR

Conformity to the maximum working time of adult labour
Conformity to the minimum health and safety conditions of adult labour

Conformity to the maximum
working time of adult labour
(Daily working time)

Conformity to the maximum
working time of adult labour
(Weekly working time)

Conformity to the minimum health and safety conditions of adult labour
(Fişek A.Gürhan: Ülkenin Geleceğine İpotek: Çocuk Emeği
Petrol-İş ‘92 Yıllığı)

Conformity to the minimum health and safety conditions of adult labour
(Taşyürek M. , Fişek A.Gürhan: Çocuk Çalıştıran Küçük İşyerlerinde Çalışma Koşulları Üzerine Bir Araştırma, Çalışma Ortamı Dergisi,
Fişek Sağlık Hizmetleri ve Araştırma Enstitüsü Yayını,Eylül-Ekim 1995 Sayı 22)
Petrol-İş ‘92 Yıllığı)

Children work, and are worked, for so long hours that these limits are much more that for adult workers.
Children work, and are worked, under much more unhealthy and unsafe conditions, as compared to even a minimum for adult labour.

In Turkey, there is growing interest in the issue of child workers especially after the International Year of the Child in 1979. In particular, the IPEC programme which was initiated in Turkey along with 5 other developing countries with the ILO support was a cornerstone in terms of placing the issue in the agenda of all organised sections of the society.
(Yansı13)

SOLUTION FOR CHILD LABOUR?

The main objective is to remove children immediately from working life and maintain education. This will require two stages:

1st STAGE (Long term objective): To eliminate poverty, problems in education and social security system, unemployment in the future. These can be done by social policies. However, this objective can not be achieved in a short time. Especially in my country where social state is diminishing rapidly, it is a dream to expect such conditions.
What shall we do until we reach our objectives? Shall we do nothing for the working children of today?

2nd STAGE (Short term objective): Working and living environment of children who must work, should be improved. Efforts should concentrate to ease their lives and to live this period with minimum damage.

In this context, there are two intervention programme groups. The first is the extension of health and other social services to working children and improvement of their working environments. The second is the withdrawal of children from working life through improving the income status of their families.

In the meantime, we can not neglect children working today, who encounter the damaging effects of working life. As Fiþek Institute, we are implementing our current studies in the framework of a “short term program”, with the aim of helping working children to ease their lives till the long term objectives are reached.

This program is called as Fiþek Model and its objectives are to provide health and social services and to improve the working environment by preventive engineering measures. We are establishing health centres in regions of small industries for this purpose. These centres are open all year round and where routine check-ups are made and all children can benefit from first aid and other treatment facilities available.

Furthermore, we have “mobile units” offering the same service to small scale enterprises employing children. These vehicles are organized as examination rooms and provide a suitable environment for periodical health checks of all adult and child workers. Since we go to the enterprises, it is possible for our physicians to see and evaluate the working environment, thus taking the special health risks into account.

In addition; our industrial hygienists and occupational safety engineers visit the workplaces, interview the workers and employers, and eliminate hazardous environmental factors while training the workers.

For the time being, our studies are accepted and supported by a group of employers. The attitude of some others is unsympathetic and selfish, they may not even allow us to enter their workplaces. However in these cases also we have two ways to communicate with the children : 1) The children attend our first aid+treatment centre 2) They go to apprenticeship education centres, to which they have to attend one day a week according to the regulations. We use both ways, and the number of children benefiting from our services is rapidly increasing.

It was not easy to achieve this point both as an institute and as a program on working children. Currently we employ 24 professionals and we have over 100 voluntary labour force. We have 5 implementation & occupational safety exhibition centres and 4 mobile units in three industrialized provinces like Ankara, Istanbul and Denizli. We have been the leader of many initiatives in our country on occupational health and safety, child employment and sexual discrimination among child workers. We have been publishing the only periodical in the country in this field “Working Environment” for 6 years.

A total of 650 enterprises, 7000 workers and 2000 child workers are using the services in our occupational health and safety centres established among a number of small scale enterprises.

When we started our studies in 1982, we did not use any public or international funds. Our only resource was one-to-one correspondence with the individuals, the contributions of employers for the service provided to small enterprises and the sacrifice of our staff. These resources are the primary support to our studies today also. We charge the employers for our services for small scale industry, environmental and biological monitoring and physical examination of the workers. Our service for children under 15 is free of charge. We go to their workplaces and schools for interviewing and screening.

Fişek Model is a dynamic model. We have achieved our current level step by step, which are (Yansı 8) :

Health Centres in Industrial Areas
“Mobile Health Units” for Small-Scale Enterprises
School Health Services in Apprenticeship Education Centres
Strengtheining equipment facilities
Environmental and workplace monitoring
Multi-disiplinary manpower employment
“Friends of Health” programme forwarded to employers
Exhibition Halls on “Environmental and Workplace Development”
“Occupational Safety” practices
Campaigns
* Don’t Start Smoking
* Improvement of Child Identity through recreation.
Research on Child Labour
*Medical and Social Problems of Child Workers
*Dangerous Jobs and Workplace Conditions in Child Labour
*Adverse Effects of Chemicals on Child Development
*Demographic problems
*Gender discriminition.
“Science & Action Centre” Activities
Joint Activities with the other organizations

Tomorrow, we will be in a better and more improved position than we are today.
There are some characteristics that distinguish our studies from others:

Multidisciplinary and multisectoral approach,
Fully-developed team work on occupational health and safety,
Pursuing the community health philosophy,
Targeting social risk groups and evaluating living conditions,
Evaluating the problems of working girls within the socio-cultural infrastructure of the society, and developing programs with their participation,
Dynamism and participating mechanisms of our system due to renewability and repeatability of it,
Multiple branches organized around a focus,
Independent and non-governmental nature,
Carrying out practical and academical studies together in harmony and documentation of all findings and experiences,
Self-sustainability.

There are two more significant factors that make our work a “model”:

To our opinion, these kind of studies on working children carried out by the NGOs should produce “models” and guide the community. The expansion of these models is the duty, and the loyalty debt of the social state and the community.
These studies constitute a model also for the other NGOs, so that they review themselvesand re-direct their public role. NGOs will play an important role in the transformation of a society and activation of people through concrete and productive action programs.

As far as the enhancement of income generating opportunities for families is concerned, there are efforts waged particularly in rural areas. These efforts aim at creating new agricultural employment without taking the family and the child apart from their village and in a way to eventually deem child labor unnecessary.

There are various intervention models tried for working children in other developing countries as well. Yet, the following principle is accepted almost everywhere: “It is impossible to save working children from work in one stroke; what is to be done is to take measures which will deem child labor unnecessary in the long run while protecting those who are presently working.”

For this purpose, it is essential to directly communicate with families and to thereby perevent further additions to the child-labour force. We are expecting your support in this direction.

For the simple reason that problems are extensive, and resources limited.