8
(b) Middle East and North Africa
In Morocco, girls from seven years onwards are per-
manently employed for up to 12 hours a day in private carpet
factories. The girls work on crowded looms, in bad lighting
and often unhealthy conditions. The employment of children is increasing as a result of increasing European demand for the carpets. Legislation and government inspection, which
effectively control such abuses in government factories, do
not extend to private factories and workshops, some of them
1 owned by foreigners.
It seems from unconfirmed reports that similar con-
ditions exist in the small-scale carpet industry in Turkey,
where child labour is also said to have increased in the last
ten years as a result of increasing demand for carpets.
A comparable situation is thought to exist in Iran,
where the bulk of carpet production comes from small private workshops, and home work. In the workshops conditions are
extremely poor and the employment of very young girls is normal.
Home work is handed out by middlemen, who do not have the responsibilities of employers, and so the children's working
conditions are subject to no controls.
(c) Europe
2
In Portugal government statistics estimated, in 1960,
that 168,000 children between 10 and 14 were working full time.
Children of 11 to 13 years were employed in textile factories near Oporto; they worked a 6-day-week and were dismissed at
the age of 14 when they became eligible for official apprentice's salaries. It is also reported that children from
10
Anti-Slavery Society, 1978, Child Labour in Moroccan Carpet Factories.
2. ILO, 1972, p. 25.
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