The next big development goal: child labor

The United Nations may have found its next big development project, ending child labor. The U.N. will unveil plans today to eliminate child labor by 2020. A new study by the U.N. shows that child labor will not decrease in the developing countries that are now seeing economic growth. The report predicts that there will still be 190 million child laborers in 2020 if nothing is done.

From the Guardian, writer Randeep Ramesh talks about the new development goal.

A UN report – to be launched on Monday morning by the UN's special envoy on education, the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown – warns that unless the issue is tackled, the internationally agreed millennium development goal that all children should complete primary school by 2015 will not be achieved. Child labour, the UN says, "exacerbates the risk of being out of school. In India, non-attendance rates for child labourers are twice the level for children not involved in child labour."

The research says the "sheer scale of child labour is not widely recognised". About 60 million under-17-year-olds are involved in global agriculture. Mining, it says, is a "magnet" for child labour, with children as young as six digging shafts and scuttling around mounds of rock with little more than a hammer and chisel. Around half of the workforce in Afghanistan's brick kilns is aged under 14. In Ethiopia almost 60% of children work.

Multinational companies also come under fire. The report points out that in China, underage labour recruited by networks of agents from poor rural areas "has been found in factories supplying companies such as Apple, Samsung and Google".

It also chides industry for failing in the past to keep its side of the bargain in tackling the problem. US chocolate companies, the UN notes, had promised to educate all children in areas where it grew cocoa in west Africa – a commitment that would cost the industry $75m or 0.1% of annual sales. Instead it spent about $20m over eight years and reached just 4% of children in cocoa-growing communities in Ivory Coast and 30% in Ghana.

The UN says that the first step would be to make education compulsory for all children – and perhaps go as far as paying families to send their children to school, an approach that has worked in Brazil. This would mean that by 2015 an extra $13bn in funding would be needed.

30% of Afghan children are working in child labor

30% of all children in Afghanistan are laboring in some fashion. Most are doing it just to help out their family, because their parents cannot earn money or not enough of it. There are as many as 50,000 to 60,00 child laborers in the city of Kabul alone.

From CNN, writer Kyle Almond filed this story that takes a look at another of the many problems in Afghanistan.

UNICEF has estimated that at least 30% of Afghan children age 5-14 are working in some form. But the issue goes far beyond Afghanistan's borders: UNICEF says that worldwide, approximately 158 million children between 5 and 14, one of every six children in that age group, are engaged in child labor.

"Most of these children are working to help their families meet their basic needs; not all of them," said Eric Edmonds, an associate professor of economics at Dartmouth College who advises many U.S. and international organizations on child labor issues. "I think it's easy to see instances of child abuse and child neglect and assume they're pervasive and they characterize all of those working children. But I think the reality of the situation is that ... most of those working children are doing so to help meet family needs."

While it varies by country, Edmonds said the world's most common child labor -- by far -- is agricultural. Forget about the manufacturing "sweatshops" that tend to dominate the headlines. Often, child labor is simply a kid working on the family farm.

"A lot of people say that's character-building, that's good stuff for them to be doing," Edmonds said. "But the risks associated with agriculture are actually a lot more extreme than a lot of shopkeeping-type tasks that you can imagine: children involved in toxic chemicals, children exposed to pests, children operating machinery that's too large for them, isn't designed to be done by them. All are serious risks that unfortunately a lot of children face."

Of course, the risk of physical harm is just one of many consequences that come with child labor, whether it's on a farm, in a factory or on a street.

The most serious might be the effect it has on society as a whole. If children are spending most of their time working, they'll never be able to attend school and get the education they need to find a better-paying job one day. Often, they will grow up illiterate and poor and pass on the same problems to their own children.

Domestic child laborers at risk of abuse in Pakistan

From IRIN, a story about the mistreatment and abuse of Pakistan's child labor force.

In recent months stories in the Pakistani media of horrendous abuse suffered by some children engaged in domestic work have focused attention on their plight.

In Karachi, the capital of the southern province of Sindh, this month, 14-year-old Muhammad Zafar was rescued by police after neighbours reported the boy had been kept shackled at the home of his employers. He had also not been paid wages for some 19 months.

“His employers told us he had stolen gold items, and we could not see him or take him away till these had been paid for,” Zafar’s mother, Parveen Bibi, told IRIN.
She said the boy had been sent out to work as the family was very poor.

At a busy fast-food outlet in Karachi, several small girls watch over children they are paid to “mind”. Their charges are in many cases barely a few years younger than themselves. In houses across cities, it is common to see children sweeping floors, washing dishes or performing other kinds of work.

They are a part of the child labour force, which consists, according to official figures, of three million children under 18. Of these, according to a 2003 survey in six major cities by the government’s Commission for Child Welfare and Development, 8 percent are engaged as domestic workers.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) puts the number of children working in the domestic sector at 264,000, according to a 2004 report.

“Under-reported”

“The abuse of children who work as domestic labourers is under-reported. These children are often trafficked from rural areas of Sindh and the Punjab, and brought to cities to work. As such they have no one to watch over them and are vulnerable to violence,” Salam Dharejo, national manager at the Child Labour for the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child NGO, told IRIN.

He said this year they had documented six cases of death among child domestic workers as a result of violence inflicted on them.

It is believed that rising inflation is forcing families to send their children out to work. “Hardship for almost all families is increasing because food is more expensive,” Sikander Lodhi, an economic analyst, told IRIN.

According to the Consumer Price Index of the Federal Bureau of Statistics, annual inflation was running at 15.37 percent in November 2010. Food price inflation is a key factor in this trend.

“Poverty is a huge factor in people sending children out to work, or selling them to those who use them as labour. The recent floods have also brought an increase in child labour, as people who came into cities after being displaced from poverty-stricken districts in Sindh and the southern Punjab saw opportunities to obtain employment for children in urban households,” Dharejo said.

“My ten-year-old daughter now works in a big house, looking after a two-year-old and doing some cleaning chores. I worry about her constantly,” Saadia Bibi, 40, told IRIN.

Torture, sexual abuse

She has good reason to worry. Last month, in the southern Punjab city of Multan, a child the same age working as a maid was brutally tortured because her employers believed she was possessed by evil spirits.

There have been other allegations of torture involving child maids although in the high profile case of 12-year-old Shahzia Masih, whose employer was accused of her murder in January this year, a court in November acquitted him of the charges.

Mistreatment of child domestic workers, according to the limited research available, is widespread.

Sexual abuse is not uncommon either. According to the Alliance Against Sexual Harassment (AASHA), comprising a group of organizations working against the harassment of women in the workplace, 91 percent of female domestic workers say they have suffered sexual abuse.

Overnight Links for December 16th

The UK is giving some emergency humanitarian assistance to Somalia. 1.5 million people have been displaced due to ongoing violence, so the emergency aid will provide food, water and shelter for those people. This Shabelle Media Network article from All Africa gives us the details. 

80 million children work in Africa and experts warn that that number could increase. From Africa News, writer Rubakana Eddy explains how most of thee children are victims of exploitation.

From the Inter Press Service more details on Israel's mass deportation of African migrants. Writer Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani find that some observers are likening it to building a new wall against another people.

Finally, Reuters Alert Net is providing an audio newscast of world headlines that we will begin embedding into our overnight links post.

Large percentage of children work in Yemen

A large percentage of Yemeni children have to find jobs to support their family. Some children are even smuggled across the border into Saudi Arabia because the jobs are better paying there. 40 percent of Yemen children between the ages of seven and thirteen work, some in dangerous jobs.

From this AFP article that we found at the Mail and Guardian, writer Janal Al-Jaberi tells us about a pair of young brothers who are forced to work.

Eleven-year-old Raseel al-Khameri and his eight-year-old mute brother, Anwar, spend their days working in the garage in Sana'a in an attempt to sustain a needy family in the village of al-Akhmoor, 300km south of the capital.

"I work day and night. You'll find me here [in the workshop] anytime from 9am until 4am," Raseel says shyly, as his small hands skilfully work with various car parts.

With an innocent smile never leaving his face, little Anwar closely follows his older brother's moves as he also tries to master the job.

A study carried out in 2010 by the United States-based aid group CHF International revealed that out of Yemen's 11-million children, five million are currently employed.

Three-fifths of those do not receive an education while the remaining two million both study and work at the same time.

CHF said that 40% of Yemeni children are drawn into the labour market between the ages of seven and 13.

CHF said that 80% of those children are involved in hazardous and arduous jobs, while more than 60% use dangerous tools and over 30% said that they were injured or have fallen ill due to their jobs.

Child labor in the mines of Congo

Some areas of the world have trouble keeping children in school, not because the children have a lack of interest, but because their family needs them to earn an income. The children work in the Republic of Congo's mineral mines, going underground digging and chopping away, then carrying bags of the minerals up and out of the mine. The children do not keep all of the money themselves but share it with the family so they can go and buy food. The parents then become dependent on the money and encourage their children to stay out of school.

From this AFP article that we found at The West Australian, we learn more about the children's plight.

Barefoot with water up to his knees, seven-year-old Isaac sifts through sand to extract copper like hundreds of boys in southeast DR Congo, forced by poverty to quit school and work in the mines.

Isaac abandoned his maths and language classes in February, leaving the only school in Kamatanda, a small village in Katanga province, the main mining region in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Since then, he has worked in a vast open copper mine in the area, helping some 2,000 "diggers" extract the mineral under a blistering sun, then to sell to businesses in Likasi, a nearby town.

There are about 400 children from Kamatanda and other surrounding villages who contribute to the effort by sorting, carrying, or cleaning the mineral.
...

Isaac says he earns less than four dollars (three euros) each day in the mine, "and with that I can buy clothes and contribute to the expenses at home," he explains, his face still full of childhood innocence.

He is the third child in a family of eight, and when his parents could not afford the 30 dollars needed to pay his yearly school fee he joined his brothers and sisters in the mine.
...

"When they quit their classes, they go back down the pits. The children want to study, but the parents lack the (financial) means," says Alphonsine Fumbi, a mother of six.

Three of Fumbi's own children previously worked as assistant diggers.

Video: children working in Indian coal mines

From France 24's channel on You Tube, a profile of child laborers in Indian coal mines.

Child labor increases in Cote D'Ivoire

Yesterday we presented a story that had good news about child labor in Asia. Today however a new report from Save The Children presents a different picture for the African country Cote D'Ivoire.

Save The Children says that rising poverty in Cote D'Iviore is forcing more children into labor, sometimes in unsafe, or difficult conditions. The international NGO estimates that one quarter of all children in the country are working.

From IRIN, we read more about the report and the lives of children in Cote D'Ivoire.

Sharply rising poverty is causing exploitative child labour to increase says NGO Save the Children in its report “It’s there it’s difficult: exploitative child labour in Côte d’Ivoire,” launched today.

It is estimated that one quarter of all children work in Côte d’Ivoire and eight out of 10 of them are exploited according to the government. Harmful activities include sex work, cutting down trees, burning fields, climbing trees to collect palm oil, carrying heavy loads, working as unpaid domestics or market vendors far from their families.

With a deteriorating economy and shrinking government services, more of these children end up working, says Save the Children. Country-wide the number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day has risen from 10 percent in 1985 to 49 percent in 2008, according to the World Bank.

Most children forced to sell sex to survive in Abidjan told local NGO Cavoequiva they were brought to the capital by relatives or family friends. Côte d’Ivoire, alongside many West African countries, has a long-standing practice of families sending their children to relatives in towns to be schooled or find work or apprenticeships.

Save the Children’s child protection adviser Mark Canavera told IRIN: “The practice of relatives taking care of children or using children for light, legitimate labour have changed and become more exploitative as poverty increases.”

The report studies child labour practices in 18 Montagnes region in the west and in the Adjamé neighbourhood of Abidjan.

Rural risks

In 18 Montagnes – the country’s primary cocoa-producing area – children have traditionally helped their families in the fields, partly as a means of learning how to farm, says Save the Children.

But with rural poverty increasing and cocoa prices still relatively low, farmers have to produce more to survive and are forcing children to work longer hours, the report says.

In Doutrou village, 50km from Man, capital of 18 Montagnes region, village chief Kucsa Benoila told IRIN: “When we returned to start planting we all had to work twice as hard…even now our cocoa plantations are not yet up and running again.”

Recommendations

Local NGOs have called on international NGOS and the government to set up more care centres to support children forced to live and work on the streets.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children recently completed a study to identify the strengths and weaknesses in Côte d’Ivoire’s protection infrastructure.

Some existing government services could be extended to working children, the report suggests, such as the accelerated learning programme for children and youths whose schooling was interrupted by conflict.

Building up a wider child protective system involves improving practical services – such as medical help and care centres – economic support, for instance giving micro-credit loans to farmers, and building up the legal system, said Save the Children’s Canavera, who points out that the Ministry of Families must involve other ministries.

Thus far, he said the employment and justice ministries are “showing some interest”.

Asia still spending on children during the recession

In comparing the current recession to the Asian economic crisis of 1997, the International Labor Organization found some good news. Child labor has not increased significantly during this current slowdown, whereas child labor had a huge jump in 1997. The ILO attributes this to Asian governments continued spending on social assistance instead of cutting those programs.

From the IPS, reporter Marwaan Macan-Markar examines how the Asian countries are coping in the world's recession in regards to child labor.

"There are some positive signs emerging from the current crisis unlike in 1997," says Gyorgy Sziraczki, senior economist at the Asia-Pacific office of the International Labour Organization (ILO). "Governments have learnt from the Asian crisis and are not repeating the same mistakes as they did then."

"Cutting social spending after the 1997 crisis was an aggravating factor to increasing child labour," added Szirackzi in an interview in his Bangkok office. "This explains the good news this time."

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) learned similar lessons. The two financial institutions’ austerity conditions for large bailout or rescue packages included cutting social spending. This time, though, "they didn’t suggest cuts in social spending," said Szirackzi.

"The governments in the region did not cut social spending but introduced programmes that strengthened social spending," Szirackzi explained. Indonesia and the Philippines are among the countries where innovative social spending programmes have been introduced, consequently keeping vulnerable children in the school system.

Indonesia’s ‘Hopeful Family Programme’, which was implemented in January 2007, was expanded in 2009 to cover more families in the giant archipelago following the crisis hitting its export sector. Under this programme, families living below the poverty line of less than 15 U.S. dollars per month get a direct boost of cash on top of aid for health and education.

These forms of assistance are conditional on expectant mothers undergoing at least four medical check-ups during maternity, said the ILO in a study assessing the impact of the global financial crisis in Asia. "Families with children need to take them to local community health centres to receive vaccinations and ensure they complete up to junior high school. A minimum attendance requirement is also set at 85 percent each year," added the report.

A similar programme in the Philippines—called ‘Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino’ or poverty reduction programme for the Filipino familiy, which was implemented in 2007—was expanded in 2009 to benefit more poor families, says Armin Bauer, a senior economist at the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. "They were given conditional cash transfers to ensure that maternal care was ensured and that children went to school."

The Philippines and Indonesia gave additional money to the already prevailing social spending programmes, he said in a telephone interview from the Philippine capital, Manila. "After the 1997 crash there was no additional money spent, only cuts."

Child labor just might help to rebuild Afghanistan

School is optional in the under-developed world, and nowhere is this more true than Afghanistan. In a country where drastic steps must be taken to put food on the table, many children work to help feed their siblings or parents. Sometimes the small pay of the parents is not enough, so some of the boys of the family will have to work instead of attending classes.

From the Telegraph UK, writer Phil Hazlewood profiles one such family.

"We came here to earn money," said Chaman Gul, leaning on the handle of a shovel in a pile of wet sand at the Gahiz brick factory, which makes 42,000 bricks every day for building sites from Kabul to Bamiyan.

"My five sons are here and I have four daughters at home in the village."

Chaman is 36 but looks two decades older. Four of his sons - Omar, 15, Amin, 13, Taza, 12, and 10-year-old Anam - squat nearby, looking up occasionally as they fill cast-iron brick moulds.

His fifth, Stana, 18, is busy elsewhere on the site.

The children, whose small footprints are left in the powdery dust amid tyre and hoof marks, are not playing though.

They are working and Chaman's youngest son - four years below the minimum working age in Afghanistan - is by no means an exception.

Elsewhere in Kabul, other school-age children can be seen in grimy workshops, pushing wheelbarrows, struggling with heavy sacks or, unseen behind the walls of housing compounds, weaving carpets by hand on large metal looms.

UNICEF said in 2007 that a quarter of Afghan children aged between seven and 14 worked, despite legal and constitutional protection and Afghanistan being a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) estimates that 60,000 children are currently working in Kabul alone.
...

At the brick factories, children spend their days in the choking air of dust and acrid charcoal smoke from the kilns, stacking and sorting rectangles of wet bricks laid out to dry in long rows.

Poverty, inflation and the human cost of war - death or disability among parents - mean they must work to feed their families, said Nadery.

Even when parents do have jobs, and free government schools exist, attendance is often dependent on whether a family can afford pens and paper, he added.

Malawian Children exposed to tobacco plants suffer ill-health

An NGO that works in Malawi has completed an investigation of child laborers who work in the countries Tobacco fields. The study shows that the children suffer nicotine poisoning due to exposure of the plants. Plan International asks that the tobacco growers provide protective clothing to the children. Plan says that the exposure that is similar to smoking 50 packs a day.

From this summary of the report that we found at The Age, writer David Smith reveals more of the children's illnesses.

Plan International cites research showing that Malawi has the highest incidence of child labour in southern Africa, with 88.9 per cent of five-to-14-year-olds working in the agricultural sector.

It is estimated that more than 78,000 children work on tobacco estates - some up to 12 hours a day, many for less than two Australian cents an hour and without protective clothing.

Plan International's researchers invited 44 children from tobacco farms in three districts to take part in workshops. They revealed physical, sexual and emotional abuse and spoke about the need to work to support themselves and their families and pay school fees.

The children reported common symptoms of green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning, including severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.

''Sometimes it feels like you don't have enough breath, you don't have enough oxygen,'' one child said. ''You reach a point where you cannot breathe because of the pain in your chest. Then the blood comes when you vomit. At the end, most of this dies and then you remain with a headache.''

Green tobacco sickness is a common hazard of workers coming into contact with tobacco leaves and absorbing nicotine through their skin, particularly when harvesting.

The young nanny's of India

Many young girls from the ages of 12 to 15 are employed as nanny's in India. Even though there is a law in India that makes this illegal, a loophole in laws makes it impossible to prosecute, for a similar law make the practice legal.

Regardless of the law loophole, its is a culturally accepted practice to have young girls employed as nanny's even though they should be enjoying their own childhood.

From Time Magazine, writer Nilanjana Bhowmick introduces us to one such nanny.

Asha's day starts at 8 a.m., when she wakes up and makes breakfast for the family she lives with as a nanny in Noida, a suburb of New Delhi. She takes the kids down to play, feeds them, bathes them and puts up with their tantrums. Asha is around 14 years old — a few years older than the children she minds. Neha, 12, works as a daily maid for a family in New Delhi. her day starts in the kitchen, where she struggles over the high sink every morning to wash the breakfast dishes. Like Asha, Neha has never been to school, and like Asha, she is one of hundreds of thousands of child laborers believed to be working as domestic helpers in homes across the nation.

Hiring young children to work as nannies and maids in India is increasingly common. It's also illegal. In 2006, India banned the employment of children below the age of 14 in homes and restaurants. And though the law has gone largely ignored by thousands of employers, it is getting more attention on national and international levels. Earlier this week, a U.S. State Department report on human trafficking indicted India for its lack of commitment to the issue, coinciding with a June 15 statement by a trial court in Delhi about the need to punish agencies that recruit children, along with child workers' family members. "We have lost our national conscience," says Shantha Sinha, chairperson for the National Commission of Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). "Otherwise why would educated people break the law at every moment by employing minors as domestic help and behaving like they are doing the children a favor?"

The Trafficking in Persons Report 2009, released on Tuesday, gave India a Tier 2 rating for the sixth consecutive year, citing that India has not been able to suppress human trafficking, "particularly bonded labor." According to a 2001 census, an estimated 185, 595 children are employed as domestic help and in small roadside eateries, a number that is believed to have grown today. Most child domestic workers in India are trafficked by placement agencies operating in poor states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The agencies pay families in advance for their children and then place them at jobs in cities, tying the child to the agency until he or she pays off the money given to his family. The June court statement issued out of Delhi was over the case of local couple who had been accused by police of hiring and ill-treating a 15-year-old girl working as their maid. The couple pleaded that they did not know the girl was a minor, and that the placement agency told them that she was over 18. The case put the spotlight back on the thousands of illegal agencies operating in the Delhi and surrounding region, and the need for a regulatory body to monitor their activities. Out of the 5000 odd placement agencies in the area, only 33 are registered.

Child Labor in the Jamdani industry

from the Daily Star

This explores child labor to make high end clothing. Jamdani is the type of fabric used. - Kale

Children from very poor families are falling victim to slave labour in the thriving Jamdani industry of the country as weavers are exploiting poor children as young as five years old.

Poverty and hunger is pushing many parents to send away their children to work in the industry -- a handicraft legacy we are proud of as our heritage -- in return for little or no wages.

While many in the world scream out for fair trade, refusing to buy 'cheaper' products that come out of a third world production unit akin to slavery, many children are losing their childhood here in our own country to weave the fine Jamdani material that is sold as higher end products in the clothes markets.

A recent visit to a Jamdani production village, Noapara, under Rupganj upazila found that most Jamdani weavers are children between the ages of five and 10. These children work from dawn till 8:00 in the night, mostly in return for extremely low wages, if not for food alone.

The employers claim that a very young and tender age is the proper time for training for this industry as the youngsters can pick up lessons very quickly.

Badrul Alam, an employer, said, "The prime criterion behind selecting such young children is that they abide their employers in this difficult training without a protest."

According to UN convention, all forms of child labour is prohibited below 18 years of age. The Children Act 1974 of Bangladesh declares child labour illegal under 14 years of age. The project coordinator of Street Children Programme of Aparajeyo-Bangladesh, Altaf Hossain Salim, however points out that few pay heed to this law in our country.

Most of the children working in Rupganj are from nearby districts of Kishoreganj, Mymensingh, Barisal and Chandpur. The dire poverty in those areas compels the parents to make their children work and Jamdani weavers exploit the child labourers in this process.

In typical practice, employers take on children, sometimes as young as five years old, as apprentices for two years to teach them how to weave. During this learning period the children are not paid anything but provided food and clothes. They are also given Tk 20 as pocket money every week.

They are allowed to visit their parents during the two Eid festivals in a year.

On completion of the apprenticeship period, the child labourers are employed for two further years on bondage. For this period the employers strike an agreement with the children's parents, usually for three to ten thousand taka depending on the child's age and experience. They pay half of this amount in one instalment to the parents.

The child labourer gets paid the remaining half on completion of his contract.

One Jamdani maker, who employs children, explained the basis for the wages to The Daily Star, "During the apprenticeship period a child tends to make a lot of mistakes so we have to make up for the damage to our production, so we do not pay the children."

According to Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) statistics, there were 17 thousand Jamdani looms in the villages of Noapara, Rupshi, Tarabo, Khalpar under Tarabo union alone in 1947, with every family owning one.

After 1971, the number of looms fell to around nine thousand in 17 villages under Rupganj and Siddhirganj upazilas.

A BSCIC survey in 1999 found the number of looms to be 2,845, which fell to 2,519 in 2002. The number of Jamdani weavers in these villages is now 5,669.

Azizur Rahman, 36, a weaver from Noapara, is a plot owner at the Jamdani Industrial Estate and has been involved with the Jamdani industry for the last 30 years. He inherited the trade from his father.

He has a son and a daughter but is not interested to involve his son with Jamdani weaving because of the hardships of the trade.

Aziz said, "I went through so much hardship and yet I could not develop the quality of my life, so I don't want my child in this trade. I want my son to add quality to his life.”

Mustakim, a 12 years old child labourer from Kishoreganj has been working as a weaver for the past five years with a unit on the Jamdani Industrial estate.

He begins a typical day at 6:00am in the morning that often ends at 8:00pm.

"Sometimes I work for a straight 24 hours according to need, especially if my employer gets large orders," he said.

The children who work at the looms remain seated there all their working hours. They have to remain bent over their work at all times. They are not allowed to leave their looms, other than for lunch break and toilet, during these hours.

"On the first year of my apprenticeship I used to hurt all over my body at the end of a day's work, I especially had cramps in my legs and severe back pain," Mustakim said.

Link to full article. May expire in future.