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2
school teachers are untrained. Virtually anyone who has completed five years of secondary education may teach. It is not that there is a dearth of applicants for places at the Colony's three small teacher training colleges. The number of appli- cants in 1970 was so heavy that the Gov- ernment, instead of devising a crash pro- gramme for these enthusiasts, promptly raised the entry requirements. In this field, as in so many others, the Govern- ment is grappling with problems today which are in part the product of its own past mistakes.
child labour
The much publicised problem of child labour in Hong Kong can only be under- stood in the light of the summaries al- ready given about working conditions, social welfare, wages, and education. The educational system forces children aged twelve on to the labour market, and parents need the income these children can earn because of their own inherent poverty and insecurity.
Child labour, with minor restrictions, is quite legal in Hong Kong outside the in- dustrial sector. The restrictions are that no girl under 12 may be employed in domestic service; that no young person under 16 may be employed in the col- lection of rubbish; that children under 14 may not work in bars or dance halls; and that no child under 14 may work on any ship, except where only members of his own family are employed. Apart from these limitations the whole of the service sector is open to child labour and there are no restrictions on the employment of children as outworkers in their own homes. On the other hand, it is absolutely forbidden to employ any child under 14 in an industrial undertaking or in a speci- fied dangerous trade.
How much child labour is there? The Government does not collect statistics on this (and it would be difficult to do so) but the 1971 Census recorded that 35,925 children aged from 10 to 14 in- clusive were 66
economically active"
; of whom 12,545 were boys and 23,380 were
girls. (A further 8,432 boys and 12,821 girls in the same age group were recorded as being neither at work nor at school.) In addition, at the time of the Census, there were 23,234 children aged 6 to 9 inclusive who were not at school. Pre- sumably some of these were in fact at work. Table 25 of the Census Report 1971 provides information on the em- ployment undertaken by the 10 to 14 year olds, and also indicates their level of educational attainment. That table is reproduced on page 20. Given the nature of certain industries listed it is extremely difficult to avoid the conclu- sion that large numbers of children were being employed illegally in industry, even when it is remembered that the 14 year olds in the table are quite legally em- ployed. The extent of illegal child labour is, of course, a controversial question. Since 1969 the Labour Department has been running special inspection cam- paigns to check its incidence and there has been a steady decrease over the years. In 1969 raids on 1,708 factories resulted in more than 400 factory owners being prosecuted in respect of 1,387 children. 52 of whom were aged 10 years or under and the majority of whom were paid be- tween HK$2 and HK$4 for working a 9 to 11 hour day. In July 1972 920 fac- tories were visited and 89 children were found working in 65 of them. In Decem- ber 1973 visits to over 4,700 factories yielded only 36 children under fourteen. In March 1975 inspectors called on over 5,000 industrial undertakings and found only 11 children under fourteen in 11 different establishments. This represented 0.22 per cent of the workers employed in the establishments (South China Morning Post, 23 April 1975). Thus, the trend is clearly downward, helped partly by the Labour Department's campaigns, partly by the increased fines imposed on offend- ers in recent years-although these penal- ties are still not high enough-and cer- tainly by the high levels of unemploy- ment in the Colony over the past two years.
But any dispute over the illegal employ- ment of children misses the main point: that a great deal of child labour is legal and, until major reforms are made in
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