The Child Coal Hauler
This particular article is about three kids who were left behind by their parents in China. They are now working as coal haulers and they look to be possibly 10-12 years old. The age requirement to work in China is 16, and until the age of 18 children are not allowed to do construction or mining work (like the kids mentioned in the article). It is believed that many of these kids are left behind because their parents go to the big cities to look for work and leave the children behind with friends or relatives to look after them. This results in a lot of children running away in search of their parents. Having no idea where to look, they become very vulnerable to cheap, child labor. This article is not very long, but there is also a video attached to it. The video is a 12 minute documentary on these children and although it is in a different language, the struggles the children endure are very obvious. The three kids work very hard hauling coal across the city on their back. Luckily for them, this video became very popular and local authorities got involved on this particular case. They found these kids and took them away from this work and enrolled them into a school.
As lucky as these individual gets were to be discovered and able to attend school, there are still many children that are left behind stuck doing these jobs that are not meant to be done by young children. Hopefully this video will raise awareness and there will be more steps in preventing children from getting stuck in this type of labor force. Unfortunately, China doesn't seem to address the problem of child labor and keep records of child labor on the downlow and do not release them to the public. This strikes me as a way of not having to address the problem since they aren't showing the data for child labor so it wouldn't be deemed as a problem.
http://observers.france24.com/fr/content/20080327-chinese-children-working-illegally-exploited
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