Nepal's working children face perilous labor

The sight of young children engaged in perilous labor and with an uncertain future is common in Nepal's cities.

Transportation is one area of particular concern because of the number of children employed and the risks they face. Everywhere can be seen children younger than 12 working in trucks, buses, mini-buses, micro-buses, jeeps and tempos, loading and unloading goods, collecting fares, and giving signals about the traffic situation while on the road.

"Child labor in the transportation sector has emerged as a major social challenge," said Madhav Pradhan, coordinator of Child Protection Sector of Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN). According to him, the number of child laborers working in the transportation sector is increasing every year, when, in fact, they should not be involved at all.

CWIN is a non-government organization in Nepal that has worked for the rights of the child and against child labor exploitation since 1987.

Despite existing laws against child labor exploitation, poverty, lack of access to schooling, social exclusion and post-conflict transition expose a large number of Nepali children to of labor exploitation, a CWIN study of child labor in the transportation sector in Nepal found. Some of these children below 12 years old work more than 8 hours a day without reasonable pay or facilities.

"These children, while at work, are not only deprived of education and other basic needs, such as health care and quality food, but are also exposed to highly hazardous situations," Pradhan told Xinhua on Wednesday. He said child laborers in transportation were prone to accidents and were also exposed to a highly polluted environment. This not only hampered healthy growth, but also gave them many chronic health problems.

In addition to its own laws protecting child rights, Nepal has also ratified various international human rights and child rights instruments that prohibit child labor, including the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child and the International Labor Organization Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.

However, this has so far failed to protect children from exploitation nationwide. "We find that there are gross violations of the legal provisions to protect the lives of children," said Pradhan, adding that CWIN study found all the key provisions of the law and international conventions were violated in the transportation sector.

Pradhan told Xinhua the decade-long conflict in Nepal was the cause of worsening child labor violations. According to him, political instability, economical fluidity and weak implementation by governmental organizations are responsible for child labor exploitation.

CWIN says there are 2,193 child transportation workers in the capital Kathmandu alone. Of these, 28.6 percent are under the age of 14, while 30.9 percent are between the age of 15 and 16 and 40 percent are between 17 and 18.

However, the National Child Labor Survey in 1996 reported there were 6.25 million children aged 5-14 years in Nepal. Of this total, 41.7 percent (2,596,000) were estimated to be "working children", 26.7 percent (1,660,000) were "economically active" and 4.5 percent (279,000) were "wage child labor".

Source: Xinhua