June 17th 2008
Director of the Beijing Juvenile Legal Aid and
Research Center Tong Lihua said the central government's determination
to wipe out child labor is "clear and beyond doubt". Tong added: "We have excellent legislation on child labor. The
Regulations on Prohibition of Child Labor, adopted by the State Council
in 2002, is by far the best and most practical law dealing with
children's rights and interests in China." The regulation stipulates that employers will be fined 5,000 yuan
($720) for every child laborer they hire for one month. If they
continue to do so, authorities will rescind their licenses. Tong said illegal use of child labor "does exist" in the country - a fact that cannot be denied. In the slavery scandal in Shanxi province last year, for example,
some unregistered brick kilns were discovered using child laborers. Local media reported in April that hundreds of children from
Liangshan, Sichuan province, were swindled into working in Guangdong
province. The center's deputy director and lawyer Zhang Wenjuan said the
government should pay closer attention to dropout students and junior
high school graduates. "Dropout children are easy targets of child labor," she said. "Under the current nine-year compulsory education system, some
junior high school graduates are younger than 16 and are easy to coerce
into becoming child laborers if they choose to work rather than to
further their educations." Zhang provided statistics showing that from 2001 to 2005, local
authorities in Zhejiang province cracked down on 2,263 cases of child
labor, involving 2,318 child laborers. The children's employers were
fined 21.6 million yuan in total. "Although the nation has achieved substantial economic development,
there are still many poor families in remote rural areas," Tong said.
"And poverty is one of the major causes of child labor." He said many poor parents want their children to make money to
support the family. Laws, however, prohibit employment of children
younger than 16. "The government needs to improve the enforcement of existing laws," he said. "They should especially crack down harder on unregistered, small,
private workshops and plants, which are more likely to employ children
to reduce production costs." Song Wenzhen, an official with the National Committee on Women and
Children under the State Council, said the government had made great
efforts to ban child labor in recent years. She also said the National Program of Action for Child Development
(2001-10) released by the State Council set detailed standards
protecting children's rights and ensuring their healthy development. The United Nations International Labor Organization inaugurated an
annual event on June 12, 2002, to help end child labor worldwide.
Source: http://en.chinaelections.org/newsinfo.asp?newsid=17996