The Horrors of Child Labor
Posted by: chocoholic in Uncategorized, tags: agriculture, child laborChildren in underdeveloped countries are subjected to harsh conditions in their jobs. The majority of child labor occurs in agriculture (Roggero et al., 2007). Children are employed to remove pests from cotton plants by hand, to work in banana fields and packing plants, to plant, weed, and pick crops, and to herd cattle (Human Rights Watch, 2006). One laborer named Jyothi Ramulla Naga is fifteen and has worked in cotton fields since she was ten. She works ten hours a day and misses school. Beginning in April Jyothi sows the cotton seeds. Then, for 70 to 100 days, she dusts pollen from two-week-old male plants onto the female plants by hand. Finally, she picks the cotton over several months. Similarly, other children work in jobs with genetically modified vegetables such as okra, tomatoes, chilies, and eggplants (Bahree, 2008). Agricultural work has serious health risks. Children spend long hours in extreme heat doing manual labor. Injuries from machetes are frequent among sugar cane harvesters. Other children work around dangerous tools and are exposed to high levels of pesticides (Human Rights Watch, 2006). Children’s bodies are harmed by the poisons in pesticides that are used frequently but are considered highly toxic. Overexposure to pesticides can cause problems in the digestive, respiratory, and nervous systems. For all their work children are paid fractions of what they deserve. Jyothi, working in the cotton fields, earns only twenty cents an hour and works from dawn until dusk. Farmers may pay just $38 to $76 a month to the parents of the laborers. Minimum wage in certain Indian states is only seventeen cents per hour, but children may only get five to ten cents an hour (Bahree, 2008).
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May 19th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
I wonder how many children actually enjoy their jobs? I mean there are jobs out there that are definately painful and dangerous for children, but then again some children might actually be pampered in the jobs that they do. I’m not really against child labor. I think that if a child wants to work and if he’s capable, then he should. Back in the “old days” kids worked on farms for the parents all the time, and they didn’t suffer.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
This should be a crime! Oh, that’s right! It is a crime! What can we do to stop this atrocity?
This post reminds me of how small I am in this big world…and also how extremely blesed I am…and how spoiled rotten my children really are! And I do mean all my children!
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
I agree that some children may like their jobs, but most of these children have no choice and no rights. They are treated like slaves, but their employers “pay” them (much less than minimum wage) so they do not seem like slave masters. If children want to work, they should at least be treated as equals with the adults they work with. However, most adults in developing countries are not getting what they deserve either.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I found a lot of information about laws and reforms trying to prevent child labor, but most sites indicated the same problem: too many criminals, not enough patrolers. Plus, the most any employer usually gets for a first offense is a warning and a slap on the wrist. We are truly blessed in this country, and the sad part is, most people take everything for granted. Imagine telling an average American kid that he was going to have to go work on a cotton farm all day. He would probably think you were crazy.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:15 am
To be perfectly honest, I think that any child labor is trully child abuse. I do not think that children should not be able to do work, for example, making their bed and doing chores, but to some extent, having children work for actual money is just tremendous. I do not see how people whom hire these children, can see no problem in having a child do work for a bit of money.
June 17th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
In response to nlope’s comment, I agree that most child labor is abuse, but you seem to be saying that if a child is being paid to work, they must be being abused. The problem is not that children have jobs. Sure, kids need to be kids, but if they want a job for extra money, who can complain? The problem is that employers take advantage of children and make them work in environments too strenuous for them.