TNAG-0251-FCO40-287-Education-policy-of-government-of-Hong-Kong-1970 — Page 137

MJS?

3 Das

SUNDAY MIRROR

Cetting dated

15. FEB 1970

19

FACTORY FODDER

This is the fate of the children in the Capital of Cut-price

SLAVES

THOUSANDS of children in Britain will be playing with electrically- driven

toy cars this weekend.

Almost all the cars will have come from Hong Kong. Whatever their quality, they are cheaper than any made in the UK.

"It's remarkable," a toy buyer for a chain of department stores told

me. "I don't know how the Hong Kong people can rio it for the money.'

I soon found out when I visited a factory on the San Po Kong industrial est. Here, girls were working on components for electric toys.

MADE

Their fingers were less than an inch from the burning heat of the metal. They worked fast. handling new rotor arms every three seconds.

One slip, and the skin would be seared from the tips of their fingers.

Law

MARTIN PAGE REPORTS PROM TAKING KONG

six-day week, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

to work

Several girls told niy interpreter they were earning no more than £3.

In another Hong Kong factory. I saw young girls making toy rings- the kind that sell for six- pence each in Britain.

room

The girls seemed too young to be doing fac- bench in the centre of a Sitting around a work tory work. Hong Kong's dark law sets the minimum without windows

and dirty age at fourteen.

fans, the girls punching out metal rings and mountings, and fix- ing in plastic stones."

My Chinese. inter preter questioned five of the girls.

"They all say they are thirteen. But I think they are younger."

I asked the factory's manager how old he thought his employees were, Very young girls. They're very good for this kind of work. Very good eyes, small hands.

I asked hin if he wasn't breaking the law. He laughed and "But young girls very good for this kind of work.

repeated: were

They were sitting in front of hot soldering trns.

which clamped to a bench.

With their left hands, they picked

rotor up arais and held

them With thee right nds, they then applied the solder.

against the Irons,

He said he paid each girl about £3 14s. for &

A

or were

The presses were foot- operated. With

their delicate fingers, the girls! held the small compon- ents under the pointed steel punches, and pushed their feet hard down on the pedals.

I asked foreman whether a girl did not sometimes ram a punch into one of her fingers. Yes." he replied. What happened then ? "We get another girl." Hong Kong's British colonial government con- demns employers who ex- ploit children.

..

After a series of raids on factories in one month last year, more than 400

ہیں

IN A HONG KONG FACTORY, A GIRL SOLDERS ELECTRIC LIGHT FITTINGS FOR CUT-PRICE GOODS TO BE SENT TO BRITAIN:

employers were prosecu- ted for this offence.

But Hong Kong's courts fined the guilty men less than £4 for each offence.

Token fines mean it is cheaper for a business- man to employ young children illegally, than it is for him to employ adults.

Dishonest employers are helped by the fact that there

are only thirty-three labour inspectors to enforce child employment laws in more than 13.000 factories.

Said a senior labour

official: We do our damndest. But there are factories we don't even know about."

I found one in R Government-owned resi- dential block.

In the eyes of the law It cannot be classed as a factory because fewer than twenty people are employed and there is no power-driven machinery.

Eight female workers were making paper hats. One told my interpreter she was seven years old. The children co-operate with their exploiters because, according to a British social worker, their parents can't earn enough to keep them."

In some radío factories, the girls assembling transistor sets look very

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young. But all are able to produce identity cards showing they are OVER fourteen. What the. do." explained Raymond Fong, of the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Council, is to borrow cards from elder sisters so they can get jobs at about £2 2s. a week."

1

A Chinese headmåster took me to his primary school and let me speak to some pupils.

A 12

year

old, bay told me that during school, holidays he worked a six-day week on a moulding press in a plastic flower factory. and was paid £2 1s. 1d.

During term. he took flower components home and assembled them from 7 a.m. until 1 p.m., when he set off · for school.

·

[Children attend either the morning or the after- noon shift at Hong Kong's primary schools,] Assembling plastic flowers at home. he claimed he made about 15s. a week, all of which he gave to his mother.

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