Child Labor in Afghanistan
How to progress a society where the number of child laborer increase day by day? Children may become the future leaders, ministers or presidents in a society. They should be treated equally as well. They should be given right and freedom to live. The three decades of war remained a large number of children fatherless and poor in Afghanistan.
Today, if you walk around the city, you will witness that a huge number of children do physical harsh work, like; washing cars, selling plastics, polishing boots, collecting cans and plastics from the garbage, and even begging for money. These innocent victims of previous war, in order to survive need to work because the government is irresponsible and not paying attention to them. Consequently, these children really live under economic hardship. Many of children have been away from their studying while most of them are discouraged to attend school. These poor labor children have two choices, in order to survive either they must work harshly or they will die.
Farther more,
the government acts insufficiently to solve this obstacle in the country. Since the Afghan government is lack of effective plan to fight against child labor to support them financially, as a result, it is possible that in the future they may become harmful in their society. For instance, they might become thieves, drug users or commit other criminal cases. It seems that there are several reasons that children become laborer. One reason is war and the second reason is poverty. Because war destroyed many of the families houses and killed many parents and caused many children to become orphan.
Millions of dollars have been aided from international communities, but because of corruption and lack of government’s organized strategy, left children to be poorer and hopeless. For the time being, if you drive around city, you can witness these child laborer are deprived not only from their education, they also deprived of from their happiness and play. To eliminate child laborer in the country, the Afghan government should provide children’s parents with jobs, encourage children to education, and enforce them with labor laws.
To begin with,
the first way to eliminate child labor in the country is to provide jobs for children’s’ parents. Most people know that working on small children is a crime that has no depth. Instead, they should learn to read and write to become helpful in their society. According to a survey conducted in Qambar square, by Ehsanullah Waissi, many of these child laborers practiced gathering plastic bottles from garbage and selling it to make small amount of income for their families. Farther more, we can say that these children have been abused and put their lives in danger to make income for their families. The child laborers are constituted of boys and girls between ages of 7-8 years age.
Therefore,
they must work in order to survive. Poverty pushed these children to experience physical harsh work (Children rights). Besides, another problem for the children is that their parents have no job, money and food. For that reason they force their children to work. Moreover, there are many families who live under tents and starve from lack of food.
“More than 80% of the people lack safe drinking water electricity or indoor plumbing” (Wahab). If the Afghan government provides people with jobs, the risk of poverty would reduce the threat of children becoming laborers. To remove this problem in the country, the government should consider two solutions. First of all, they government, in order to provide people with jobs, should launch factories and industries. For instance, the government should launch clothing or carpet factories and hire the children’s parents. This will not only increase the countries economics, but it will also help to eliminate poverty.
Government organizations should also take part by providing parents with educational training opportunities, which will help unemployed parents to obtain jobs. Additionally, the government can also reactivate factories which had been damaged in war. Currently, most of the products come from Pakistan. For example, Afghans don’t have clothing factory. Afghans buy pants and T-shirts made in Pakistan or Iran because of the lack of factories to produce these products. In addition, the Afghan government can launch a clothing factory to employ their parents. Not only this will make Afghan buy their local products, but it will also eliminate unemployment and practicing child laborer. As a result, they can make profit and they can support their children.
Secondly,
government should encourage children to education. Every child laborer is eager to learn and join school. They have ambition to be like other children and they wish to be free and educated. Since many children have been away of education because of poverty, still they need to attend schools and become educated. Farther, they have no supporters and advisors to encourage them to attend school. It has been very difficult for children to continue their education without supporter. Therefore, they should be support by government. Above and beyond, there are many ways to remove this problem in the country.
The first way to encourage children with education is that government should support them financially. For example, they should provide them with stationary and uniforms and other necessary material. The second way is; they should also provide them with transportation and the income which they made daily to help their parents. If government can not provide transportation for the children, another solution will be to located schools close to their house.
Moreover,
once the government provides child laborers with stationary and other necessities, they should provide compulsory schooling to prevent the child’s to work again. Since illiteracy is the main cause of children labor, today, a large number of people in Afghanistan are illiterate, “in rural areas where three-forths of all Afghans lie, 90% of the women and over 60% of the man are illiterate” (USAID supports Afghanistan….). Besides, for those children who are orphan, the government should provide them with orphanage. For education to become a solution to child labor, the government should survey, collect, and register them and then provide them with compulsory schooling.
Thirdly,
the Afghan government must legislate laws to eliminate child laborers in the country. According to the constitution and laborer law of Afghanistan, children should not work under the age of 18, but still the numbers of children laborer have been hugely increased. In order to survive these children need to protect them from the risk of starving. According to an interview conducted by Ehsanullah Waissi on 20 Apr, “ Since the government is irresponsible and we will do what ever we want until the government support and provide us regulation, then we will stop being child laborer” (Ahmadi).
At the same time, the government should enforce compulsory law to prevent children from work. Only prohibiting children form harsh working is not enough, it will cause families to become poorer and the children would stay hungry. Instead the government should support children laborers parents and also orphans with compulsory schools. The government should not children to work.
Afghan law allows that the worker should be at least fifteen years old (Reihing). The lacks of effective plan to fight against child labor in the country still exist. In addition, in order to enforce law, the government should provide them with education and financial support. Once the government supports child labors, then it can legislate compulsory laws to prevent them from physical harsh work. The law should be targeted to parents and public to prohibit children from working under the age of 18.
In conclusion,
in order to remove child laborers in the country the government should come up with the following solutions; it should provide children’s parents with job opportunity to work and also support their children. It also should encourage and support these children to education. In other words, they should launch orphanage and increase schools in rural areas. Also, the ministry of Social Work and Affairs dedicated 50 acres of land for the orphanage which can be a good solution (The Orphanage… ).
In the rural areas many schools are burnt or closed by Taliban. The government is responsible to maintain the security. “The violence has closed many schools and forced parents to choose between their children’s safety or illiteracy” (UNICEF). Additionally, the government should enforce them with some compulsory laws to prohibit them from physical harsh work.
By Ehsanullah “Waissi”
Cited Page
“Children Rights.” BBC World Service. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2010
“The Orphanage.” The Afghan Orphan Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 July 2007. 13 May 2010
“USAID supports Afghanistan’s National Literacy Program. .” afghanistan.usaid.gov.
Jamshid, Ahmadi. Personal Interview. 24 Apr. 2011
N.p., 15 Oct. 2008. Web.
Reihing, Alexandra. “Child Labor in Afghanistan.” Policy Innovations For a Fairer Globalization. N.p., Jan.
Wahab, Zaher. “Dispatches from Afghanisntan” media.IcIark.edu. April 21 st, 2010, Apr
Web. 20 July 2007. 13 May 2010
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