Herat: 2,000 child laborers recruited in vocational programs

HERAT CITY (Pajhwok): Amid increasing poverty and unemployment, the existence of street and working children has become a big social problem in the country, with thousands of such children living in a dire situation in western Herat province alone.

These child laborers perform various heavy jobs.

Provincial Public Works and Social Affairs Department, confirming the situation, said no new survey had been conducted about the number of child laborers in the province, but figures of the previous years’ surveys indicated that there were more than 9000 street and working children in Herat province and their living conditions were worrying.

Some of these children engaged in hard labor told Pajhwok Afghan News that they worked to win the bread for themselves and for their families.

Lotfullah, 9, is one of the street children who collects tin cans and water bottles on the streets to sell them and buy food for his six-member family.

Lotfullah in an innocent voice told Pajhwok that his father was paralyzed and he had no option but to work and make some money for daily expenses of his family.

“I and many other children of our locality (Shaidaee area) do not go to school because we are the only bread winners of our families and we collect scrap, polish shoes, beg and sell reusable things every day.”

Another child, Suliman, 12, believes that if the government provides him and his peers the opportunity to study by helping their families with their daily expense, they can have bright future.

He said: “We are not economically in good condition, I have been selling car windshield wipers since last seven years and I make about 150 afs on a daily basis and spend this amount on family’s daily expenses, me and my brother are deprived of school, I work to pay the monthly rent of our house and my brother works for other daily expenses of our family”.

Some residents of Herat province say poverty and other financial problems have forced some families to send their children to do hard labor.

Ghulam Sakhi Arbabi, a resident of the third district of Herat city, told Pajhwok that children were the national wealth of the country, so the government has the responsibility to pay attention to such children and support them.

Public Works and Social Affair department officials told Pajhwok that majority of the street children were beggars and some collected scrap metals, plastics or other reusable from streets, roads and garbage dumps and many were involved in hard labor as well.

Hafiz Marza Mohammad Abu Mansour, the provincial Public Works and Social Affairs department head, told Pajhwok majority of such children were without guardians. He said in order to prevent such children from hard labor, his department had undertaken different plans for them.

“Since the previous year, we introduced over 100 homeless children to orphanages and 2,200 other were recruited in technical vocational programs.”

Additional to this, he said, over 2,020 homeless and sick children were introduced to private hospitals for their free treatment.

Provincial officials say majority of street children in Herat are related to families displaced from Helmand, Farah, Badghis, Faryab and Ghor provinces due to different reasons such as drought and unemployment.

aw/ma

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