China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher
HONG KONG, Sept 3, 2007 (AFP) - Child labour is a growing problem in China and will continue to be exploited unless the government acts to stop it, a rights group said Monday, just months after a brick kiln slavery scandal.
Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin (CLB) said in a report that the brickyard scandal in Shanxi province had failed to spark any systemic change.
An extensive survey conducted in 2005 also showed that child labour was "once again on the rise" in China, it said in the report entitled "Small Hands."
"CLB's research indicates that child labour, in our surveyed areas at least, has not been reduced to any significant degree," the report said. "On the contrary, it has now become an increasingly serious social problem in urgent need of redress."
The report is based mainly on interviews with government labour officials, school teachers and administrators, factory owners, child workers and their parents in three provinces in 2005, two years before the latest scandal was exposed. It found that the high costs attached to sending children to school in rural China is piling pressure on poor families to send their kids out to work, a situation that unscrupulous employers exploit.
"The high drop out rates in Chinese middle schools create a continual supply of potential child labour, and one which is being exploited by employers seeking to cut labour costs and recruit a more compliant and malleable workforce," the report added.
"If government policies remain unchanged, there seems little chance that the growing problem of child labour in China can be checked."
The slave labour scandal erupted in June after about 400 distraught parents posted a plea on the Internet to help save their children, whom they said had been sold into slavery in Shanxi and neighbouring Henan province. The parents said up to 1,000 youths had been forced to toil under brutal and inhumane conditions at the kilns. Officials say 576 enslaved workers have since been rescued but only 41 of them were children, although this number has since been further reduced to six without explanation, the CLB report added. The parents alleged local officials and police had turned a blind eye to the racket and refused to investigate the alleged crimes despite repeated requests.Police acted only after the Internet posting filtered into the mainstream press.
China announced in July that 95 officials from the ruling Communist Party had been punished, mostly just with warnings, for involvement in the scandal. In addition, 31 owners and bosses of the brick kilns have gone on trial on charges of illegal detention or forced labour practices. Little information has been released on investigations in Henan.
The report calls on China to step up enforcement of existing laws, invest more to reduce the real costs of education and allow journalists and other organisations to report freely on any malpractices.