There
are about 60 such factories in Sorkhroad which produce most of the red
bricks used for construction in the densely populated Nangarhar
province.
Seven-year-old Rahatullah works with his
father and elder brother, Habibullah, aged 12, in a brick factory for
over 12 hours a day.
"It is always vexing when my
father wakes me at 4:00 am to go to work," the slim and deeply tanned
boy told IRIN at a factory. "I feel constant pain in my back and legs.
We have long working hours and sometimes I feel very sleepy."
Rahatullah
and his brother have never been to school, but he says he has always
wanted to study like other boys. "When I see boys and girls of my age
who go to school, I really want to join them, but we are poor and I
have to work," the young brick maker said.
Haneef
Shinwary, an official for Save the Children in Nangarhar said: "Twenty
to 25 families live in these factories and their children, along with
their parents, work in harsh conditions."
Children
face various risks at work and some of them sustain serious injuries
such as broken bones, the children's protection body said.
Poverty
Poverty is seen as a major reason driving many parents to let their young children work.
For
Abdul Mohammed who works at a factory with his two daughters, Shano, 8,
and Meeno, 10, it seems impossible to feed his eight-member family
without his daughters' support.
"Even if I work 20
hours, I will only earn 200 Afghani [about US $4] which does not meet
our basic needs. So I have no other option but to ask my daughters to
give me a hand. I feel very uncomfortable about this," Mohammed said.
UN convention
The
country is a signatory to the UN Convention on Children's Rights and
other treaties which prohibit child labour, but institutional
mechanisms which should translate formal commitments into appropriate
action are absent, Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission
(AIHRC) said.
"There is also widespread ignorance
about child rights which is exacerbated by the lack of law enforcing
capacity, thus child labour has been interwoven into the very fabric of
our society," said Najibullah, a children's rights commissioner at
AIHRC.
In an effort to mitigate the suffering of
these child labourers the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) is thinking of
establishing community schools near brick factories in Sorkhroad.
"Obviously
UNICEF alone cannot solve all the economic and social problems of
parents whose children work at brick factories, but we have plans to
build community schools in Sorkhroad and other areas where access to
education will be made easier for these children," said Saeed Mohammed
Saeed, UNICEF office director in Nangarhar.
Courtesy of RAWA News.
