Jessica Otey/ February 28, 2008/ 10:06 pm/ Labor Problems
Malawi is a relatively poor country that relies heavily on producing and exporting tobacco. Unfortunately, the tobacco industry employs a lot of children to work the fields, in hopes of acquiring cheaper labor. There are approximately 1.4 million children working in Malawi. These shocking numbers make Malawi the city with the highest incidence of child labor in South Africa.
Many of these children are forced to work because their families need the extra income. Many families can not make it solely on what the mother and father bring home. Therefore, they must rely on the labor of their children to make ends meet. In most situations, children drop out of school around age 12 in order to work on the tobacco plantations. Some may not even have the opportunity to attend school for any length of time.
The country estimates that it takes $1 for a farm worker to produce a kilogram of tobacco. Usually, the tobacco is then sold for 70 cents which means the farmer is losing 30 cents per kilogram that he sells. When the farmer can no longer make a profitable living he turns to child labor because it is cheaper.
It’s really sad that things like this happen, but these families really don’t have any choice but to allow their children to work. They have to make enough money to support themselves and it seems that the only way to do that is by sending their children to work on tobacco fields. It seems as though the only way to relieve this problem would be for the government to step up and make changes in the tobacco market and in child labor laws.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14947
2 comments:
I agree with your comments about this. It does seem that at this point the only strong move is government intervention.
It is very sad that these children are needed to drop out of school and work in order to support their family. It is difficult to convince them leave and go to school because if they do than they may not be able to eat. You are right the only thing that can help this situation is government intervention. But even if they government makes child labor laws it will still go on, so I think it would be continuous government support.
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