ILO says child workers abound

By T. Sima Gunawan

ISTANBUL, Turkey (JP): The number of child workers remains extremely high around the world, with 73 million children between 10 and 14 years old, or more than 13 percent of all children in the age group, having to labor, the International Labour Organization (ILO) reported in Geneva yesterday.

In Indonesia, 9.55 percent of children between 10 and 14 years old are economically active.

The ILO issued the report in preparation of a ministerial meeting on child labor to be held on Wednesday.

Labor ministers from the ILO's 173 member countries are expected to gather in Geneva to discuss ways to eliminate child labor, particularly in its most damaging and abusive forms of forced labor, work with toxic substances, and child prostitution.

According to the ILO, Asia has the most child workers (44.6 million or 13 percent), followed by Africa (23.6 million or 26.3 percent) and Latin America (5.1 million or 9.8 percent).

No one really knows how many children under the age of 10 are working, and no statistics are available on the number of girls engaged in full-time domestic work, ILO Director General Michel Hansenne said in the statement.

If all were taken into account, the total number of child workers around the world today might be in the hundreds of millions, he said.

In order to find out more about the real extent of child labor, the ILO provided technical assistance to Indonesia, India, Ghana and Senegal to enable local statisticians to carry out in-depth experimental surveys in a sample of between 4,000 and 5,000 households and some 200 enterprises in each country.

An average of 25 percent of children aged between 5 and 14 years in the four developing countries were engaged in economic activities during the time of survey. For a third of them, this work was their principal activity.

In Indonesia, the survey was conducted in the Bandung municipality and the Bandung regency in West Java during 1992 and 1993.

Most working children were unpaid family workers. The others worked in the service, manufacturing, trade and agriculture sectors. Those who were paid earned less than Rp 2,100 (US$0.90) a day. In the trade sector, girls' salaries were less than half that of boys.

In Indonesia, more than 25 percent of parents allowed the children to work to obtain additional income, and one-third felt that their household income would decline if their children stopped working.

Most parents said their working children contributed at least 20 percent of household income.

Child labor has been increasing steadily in the towns and cities of developing countries as a result of rapid urbanization. Children work mainly in trade and services, and, to a lesser extent, in the manufacturing sector.

In factories, children are most likely to be employed "when their labor is less expensive or less troublesome than that of adults, where other labor is scarce, and when they are considered irreplaceable by reason of their size or perceived dexterity," the ILO report stated.

Despite the growing urbanization, nine out of 10 employed children are engaged in agriculture or related activities in rural areas.

The ILO says that many working children face significant threats to their health and safety. Girls working as domestic servants away from home are frequently victims of physical, mental and sexual abuse.

The ILO also finds that there is an increasing number of child prostitutes. These children are prone to HIV.

Based on available statistics, the ILO estimates that nearly 41 million boys aged between 10 and 14 are working, compared to 32.5 million girls.

"However, the number of working girls is often underestimated by statistical surveys, as they usually do not take into account full-time housework performed by many children, the vast majority of whom are girls, in order to enable their parents to go to work," the ILO stated.

Girls tend to work longer hours than do boys.

"This is especially true for the many girls employed in other types of jobs, who must help with the housework in their parents' home," the ILO concluded.