TNAG-0783-FCO40-987-Employment-of-children-In-Hong-Kong-1978 — Page 22

In most Indian cities, children commonly work as waiters, kitchen hands, drivers, shoe shine boys and at a variety of

street trades.

1

Similar conditions probably occur in Pakistan. It is reported for example that children in the Sialkot weaving business work long hours, in unhealthy conditions caused by

2 smoke, fluff and other industrial pollutants.

In Sri Lanka, children work on plantations (including tea and rubber) helping their parents; a piece-work system

makes child labour more difficult to control. In 1973 it

was reported that children of 8 to 15 years were kidnapped, sold by their parents or otherwise forced to work in fishing villages on islands off Sri Lanka. There were no schools, little medical care, the diet was poor, and the children worked long hours hauling in nets. Despite government action against this, allegations about child labour in the fishing industry persist. In 1975 an experienced reporter claimed that he bought an eight-year-old child in a market, although this was later denied by the Sri Lankan government. In 1967 it was also claimed that poor villagers still occasionally sold their children to rich landowners and bureaucrats as domestic

servants.3

In Thailand, the government reported, as a result of its own investigations in 1965 and 1967, that some factories around Bangkok making or packaging such things as bottles, cigar- ettes, textiles, sweets, biscuits and seafood, employed children as a large part of the workforce. Many between 10 and 15 years old, and some as young as six, worked eight to fourteen hours per day, seven days a week, for derisory wages in overcrowded, poorly lit, badly ventilated, and insanitary premises. Textile factories and workshops in the same area

1. ILO, 1972; Harold Jackson, Guardian, London, 29 December

1977; Observer, London 4 April, 1976

2.

3.

Pakistan Times, 23 October 1973.

ILO, 1972; Daily Mirror, London, 13 December 1972; New York Times 13 May 1973; Sunday Times, London, 30 March, 1975; G.G. Obeyeskere, 1967, Land Tenure in Village Ceylon, Cambridge University Press, p.16.