PERSPECTIVES ON CHILD WORK
3.6 POLICY INTERVENTION
and is now a chief executive officer of an industry, employing thousands of workers is reported in a Sunday newspaper as claiming:
To make it in business you have to start from street hawking. This wisdom can only be acquired on streets, and not from any textbook. On the street; you learn how to avoid losing money, pick packets and to serve your customers (Myers, 199:14).
Because of the foregoing controversy, a small survey was carried out to determine the cultural, social, and economic factors responsible for children's involvement in street trading. Oloko (1988) did this survey in Lagos in 1988 and findings indicated that street trading does not constitute exploitation in the strict sense of the word, especially since children perceive that the proceeds of street trading are expended on their immediate future needs. To take an absolutist stance and say that all child work is "bad" is questionable (Myers, 1991).
seasons. In the same way, the children can both attend school during off-peak periods and assist their families during peak labour periods. The same point has been made about urban schools and the needs of street children.
In some countries, school attendance occurs in shifts. For example, in Addis Ababa, some children use their mornings in the dumping site of Koshe searching for food and other items, which can be sold. They then attend classes starting from midday until 5 o'clock (Newson, 1996). In Peru, schooling is offered in three shifts: in the morning, afternoon, and in the evening. Although children are in theory prohibited from attending school in the evening, in practice many do.
Methods of instruction do not take into consideration that many school children are experienced for their age and curricula do not include strong practical elements, in view of the fact that many school children will start full time work as youth or young adults (Anker, 2000).
Educational laws are the best child work laws, the single most important instrument ensuring that children under 12 years do not work. Western, industrialised countries have demonstrated the relationship between compulsory education and the reduction of child work. Enforcement problems are particularly severe in the informal sector, away from cities and in agriculture, in domestic service and home based work. Since most children work there, they work where legislation on education and child work is virtually absent (Basu & Van, 1989).
The effects of legislative measures against child work cannot be seriously discussed without taking into account the key issue of enforceability, since developing countries do not have the administrative capacity to fully enact child work and compulsory schooling. Many Third World countries, through their lack of political will power and misplaced priorities, spend disproportionate amounts on their military, even if they are not experiencing any external threats. However, countries like Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Rwanda, and Zambia, have significantly expanded primary education despite comparatively low levels of per capita income. The Asian experience is instructive as well. In 1872, when it
was still a poor country, Japan introduced compulsory primary school education.
By 1910, almost all 6 to 13 age groups attended school. In the 1950's, both North and South Korea launched successful campaigns to get all primary age children into school. China and Sri Lanka provide similar dramatic examples of governments giving high priority to primary school education (Wiener, 1991).
The real economic cost of schooling to the poor must be reduced. Education is a social right and the poor should not be disadvantaged by direct (e.g. school fees) and indirect costs of schooling. UNICEF studies in Britain, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Uganda, and Vietnam showed that the cost to families of supplying uniforms, textbooks, school building funds, parent-teacher association contributions, were relatively high, between 10 and 20% of per capita income (UNICEF, 1997). For most Africans in South Africa, school is a luxury they cannot afford as they live on less than R6 a day. A third of South Africa's children do not make it past Grade 5 (Maharaj, 2004). Schools could provide children with information about their rights and how hazardous work can be eliminated. Such information could prove especially effective for children who perform hazardous work in a family farm or business setting. The exploitation of children (who work as wage earners) can also be reduced if schools armed children with information about their rights (Anker, 2000).
There are two approaches to the study of child work in the informal sector, namely, the libertarian approach and the protectionist approach. These two broad schools of thought consist of those interested in protecting children and those interested in protecting children's rights. If children are given the right to work they, like adults, will require protection from poor and dangerous working conditions, but this should not destroy their autonomy and choice in other matters.
Some reformers are pressing for genuinely greater autonomy and self- organisation of working children (Goddard & White, 1982). This can be achieved through the mechanism of self-advocacy in which children with common problems unite to promote their cause (Boyden & Holden, 1998). The libertarian
approach to children's rights stresses that children should not be treated as a special category, but should share the rights adults enjoy. If children work, they should have the right to join trade unions. Self-advocacy should be promoted to unite children with common problems so that they deal with them more effectively. Limited successes have been achieved by street children in Latin America, child workers in India, child rice farmers in Ghana, and school children protesting against child prostitution in the Philippines (Fyfe, 1989).
3.' CONCLUSION
The framework and discussion in this chapter does not claim to cover all conceptual and definition questions relating to child work. Itprovides a guide on how these questions can be approached. The review of literature provided in the previous chapter indicates that exploitation of children in developing countries is concentrated in the informal sector of the economy where it is not easily detected.
The balance between legal and economic measures needs to be adapted for child work, type and arrangement of prevailing work and market conditions. Gender and cultural biases exposed in this chapter call for programs to protect the girl child by all stakeholders. The argument presented in this chapter favours a gradual solution, which recognises an economic reality and utilises it to help those in an unfortunate situation with the belief that this would contribute to the elimination of child work (Grootaert& Patrinos, 1999).
CHAPTER FOUR
METHODOLOGY
We should combine theories and methods carefully and purposefully with the intention of adding breadth or depth to our analysis, but not for the purpose of pursuing "objective"
truth (Fielding& Fielding, 1986:33).