ILO and activists worry over deprival of primary education to Child workers

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) said many of the estimated 75 million children who lack primary schooling started working at an early age.

"Child labour is closely associated with poverty where poor families are unable to afford school fees and other costs.

Impoverished families may depend on children for household income and hence place more importance on their work than on them getting education, the ILO said.

Child-rights activists in Thailand share those fears as they have seen situations where poverty forces parents in rural areas to take their children to work with them in the fields or to send them to work at factories in towns.

"They work long hours, earn low wages and many factories provide them with only a bowl of rice and an egg for overtime work," said Kanokwan Morapsatian of Child Labours Programme at the Foundation for Child Development (FCD).

Asia Pacific has the highest number of working children in the world. In Thailand, an estimated 1.5 million workers were aged 15-19 in 2006. Ministry of Labour statistics showed only 104,253 children aged between 15-17 were registered as child workers.

"A lot of children working in small factories have never been registered," said Kanokwan, adding they were working without legal protection.

Though there are different forms of exploitation of child labour at different levels but many are ignorant of their plight.

With a bit of cash at hand, many of them are more concerned about enjoying life in a consumer society, she said.

Working with child labourers in Bangkok and its suburbs, Kanokwan found many working youths are deep in debt as they overspend and buy on credit, fuelled by pressures to consume frivolously.

"Some of them would ask a factory accountant to shore up their pay slip so that they may buy expensive goods that they cannot afford on a low wage, she said.

A bigger concern is the jump in migrant child workers at seafood factories in Samut Prakarn province, she said.

Most of them are locked up in factories because they are not registered as migrant workers, Kanokwan said.

Meanwhile Penchit Kunopakran-wongsakorn of the Foundation for Children's Social Welfare and Child Development Institute is concerned about child labour in rural areas. Instead of being in a classroom, they are seen working with their parents in a field, said Penchit, who has been working for a lunch programme for children at 10 schools in Umphang district of Tak province.

"When teachers ask parents to send their children back to school, they said they needed them to tend the fields," Penchit said.