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Articles: Business | World Economy & Child labour
- Mr. T.R.Sridhar Prasad. Uppalapati.
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As much as two-thirds of the wage can be deducted for food and supplies while the child laborer is on the platform. Children are not paid until they return to dry land, and are not paid in full unless they agree to return to the jermal. Some children Higgs spoke with had worked on Sinchiacuan jermal for 18 months without a break. One 14-year-old had worked there for three years with only five months on land. Since the jermals are mostly unregistered, there are no official channels through which to press for improved working conditions, benefits, food and holidays.
When a nongovernmental organization sued jermal owners and governmental bodies for violating labor legislation in 1993, an agreement was reached between several governmental bodies, the All-Indonesia Fishermen's Association, and the All-Indonesian Workers' Union, that jermals would hire only workers over 18. But the agreement was ignored. KKSP started a pilot project to eliminate child labor on fishing platforms in 1994. Receiving funding from the International Labor Organization's International Program to Eliminate Child Labor, they sought to raise public awareness and to rescue 100 children from the platforms, especially those under 13.
KKSP has unsuccessfully attempted to press legal cases against the jermal owners for kidnapping and child abuse. Jermal owners are supposed to pay the fishing authorities and the Indonesian Navy for their permits, but there appears to be no record of their doing so. Thus, KKSP suspects, the jermal owners are paying 'protection money' to the Navy and 'corruption at the highest level,' as Taufan Damanile, founder and chair of KKSP, puts it, allows these conditions to continue to exist.
THE JERMAL fishing boys are hardly an isolated case. In impoverished northeastern Brazil, children work ten hours a day, cutting, piling and carrying sisal, the raw material for rugs, rope and handbags for export. Children and their parents regularly have eyeballs punctured or fingers chopped off by the sharp blades of processing machines. 'I saw a boy lose his hand,' relates one child worker. 'He had it one minute, and then he didn't have it the next. He was working with the [sisal shredder]. He was crying a lot, and he was bleeding -- on his clothes, on the ground.'
In northeastern Brazil, the paucity of decent-paying jobs for parents compels children to work early. Jose Francisco de Jesus, a man with eight children, lives in a tiny brick house without electricity, indoor plumbing or a telephone. Owning no livestock, he typically cannot afford pharmaceuticals for his children. Since his wages are only $7.50 per week, it is necessary for the children to work, as well. They each earn up to $1.50 per week.
For the family, under present circumstances, child labor is necessary for survival. De Jesus is grateful to the sisal farm owner. 'If my children didn't work,' he says, 'we would have to go hungry.' In de Jesus' village, Povoado de Jose Valerio, many families live from meal to meal. In Bahia state, annual per capita income is about $140, compared to the Brazilian national average of $4,800. Unemployment exceeds 60 percent -- illiteracy 70 percent.
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