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Factory owner beats 10-yr-old worker to death

Indrani Basu, TNN | Apr 18, 2011, 04.24am IST [from the Times of India:]

NEW DELHI: Delhi was again confronted with the ugly truth of child labour in its midst when a 10-year-old migrant working in a beedi-making unit died after being allegedly beaten up by his employer. The boy was about to be buried on Sunday morning when an alert cemetery caretaker called the police.

Moin, who had come from Madhubani in Bihar, had blue bruises all over his body, the police said. It’s not clear whether he died of asphyxiation or of injuries received on Saturday night.

Kaleemullah, the owner of the beedi unit being run from a rented room in northwest Delhi’s Bharat Nagar, is absconding since Saturday night. Neighbours claimed that the child had been working there for almost two months.

”It appears that the suspect beat the child on Saturday night and when he died, fled the spot. The child had been bathed and wrapped in cloth as per burial rites and was taken to the cemetery by Kaleemullah’s brother and others. We are interrogating them to check if they knew about the cause of Moin’s death,” said a senior police officer.

The cops are now waiting for Moin’s family to arrive from Bihar. “After the family identifies him, we will get a postmortem done,” he said.

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Child Soldiers are being used by Muammar al-Gaddafi’s Regime

from the news.scotsman.com:

 Gaddafi’s new force of child soldiers revealed

By Ruth Sherlock

COLONEL Muammar al-Gaddafi is using child soldiers in his battle to regain the besieged Libyan town of Misrata, The Scotsman has learned.

Boys as young as 15 are being conscripted, say government troops captured by the rebels.

Ninety boys, between the ages of 15 and 19, were called to military barracks in Tripoli “for training” as soon as the 17 February popular uprising began, Murad, 16, and another captive, Abdul, have independently told The Scotsman.

Speaking from different medical clinics in the besieged city, the young men were unwilling to reveal their full identities for fear of reprisals against their relatives in areas still controlled by the dictator’s forces.

The use of soldiers younger than 18 in combat adds to the list of war crimes accusations against Col Gaddafi, after it emerged in the last few days that his units were using Spanish-made cluster bombs in Misrata – which pose particular risk to civilians because they scatter small bomblets over a wide area. Most of the world’s nations have banned the use of the munitions. The Libyan government has rejected the allegations. Read more

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Maine’s Child Labor Laws Come Under Scrutiny

by Rob Poindexter

Augusta – Hearings began in Augusta Friday on a bill that would weaken some of Maine’s child labor laws.

Representative David Burns of Whiting is the sponsor of the legislation. It calls for limiting minimum wage for high school students to $5.25 per hour for their first six months on the job. It also would let high schoolers work more than the 20 hours per week they’re currently restricted to during the school year.

Opponents say if the bill passes it would open the door for employers to take advantage of the student workers. “This is nothing more than a shortsighted effort by certain employers to hire more of Maine’s teens for lower wages, for longer hours, later at night, during the school year,” said Sarah Standiford of the Maine’s Women’s Lobby.  Read more

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Foreign Tourists seek Children for Sex in Acapulco

Acapulco, Mexico (CNN) — It’s early in the evening and they’re already on the streets looking for customers.They are all very young, some still in their teens. One teenage girl wearing a tight, revealing, deep pink dress walks by while prying eyes follow her every move. At La Noria Street in downtown Acapulco, this is part of daily life. It’s supposed to be illegal, but it’s not hard to find underage girls offering sex for money here.

This is Acapulco’s dark secret and the reason why the Mexican beach resort has gained a sad notoriety with tourists seeking children for sex. Read more

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Study says Philippines has the Worst Forms of Child Labor

[source: Press release House of Representatives, Philippines:]

Writer: Isagani C. Yambot Jr., MRS-PRIB

Lawmakers recently called for a congressional probe on the report of the United States Department of Labor that the Philippines “has the worst forms of child labor.”

In House Resolution 1058, Reps. Rufus Rodriguez (2nd District, Cagayan de Oro) and Maximo Rodriguez, Jr. (Party-list, Abante Mindanao) urged the House Committee on Labor and Employment to dig deep into the report and summon the concerned government agencies to shed light on the matter.

Rodriguez said the report of the US Department of Labor was submitted to US Vice President Joseph Biden and the US Congress. Read more

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Rwanda: 27 Rescued from Child Labor

allafrica.com

Government Supporting Daily

Dan Ngabonziza


Nyagatare — 27 children have been rescued from various forms of child labour in Mimuri Sector, Nyagatare District.

A combined effort by Mimuri sector authorities, Rwanda Education Alternative for Children (REACH), SNV-Rwanda and FAWE-Rwanda, is spear heading initiatives to get help the child labour victims start up income generating activities through a newly formed cooperative.

Most of the children dropped out of school and took up jobs not fit for their age. Read more

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Lunchroom Controversy Spurs Change in Idaho Law

[KTVB.com:]

https://www.ktvb.com/news/local/Lunchroom-controversy-spurs-change-in-Idaho-law-119366994.html

by Ty Brennan

KTVB.COM

MERIDIAN — A lunchroom controversy has ended up on the governor’s desk and spurred a change in Idaho’s child labor laws.

For more than two decades, the Meridian School District has allowed students to work in the lunchroom.  In return, middle and high school students are paid, as well as given a free lunch.  But that program came to a halt earlier this year after a parent complained the district was in violation of Idaho’s child labor laws, which states a child under the age of 14 cannot work during the hours that public school is in session.

But parents rallied in support of the program taking the matter all the way to the Idaho Statehouse. Read more

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Changes to Maine’s Child Labor Laws – Will 100 Years of Progress Disappear?

[The following op-ed appeared in the Bangor Daily News on April 2, 2011]

By Barbara Burt, the Frances Perkins Center & Sally Greenberg, the National Consumers League & Co-chair, Child Labor Coalition

The Maine legislature is considering weakening the state’s child labor laws. That worries us and it would have worried Frances Perkins, who became a leader in the fight to ban exploitative child labor in the U.S. almost a century ago.

Coming after Governor LePage’s ill-conceived removal of the Department of Labor’s mural—which portrayed Frances Perkins and honored the struggles and accomplishments of Maine workers through history, including child workers—and the erasure of the name “Perkins” from a conference room, it seems that there’s an all-out attack on Maine workers underway.

Read more

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NCL’s 2010 Five Worst Jobs for Teens

[This report was originally issued in Spring 2010]

National Consumers League Report:

2010’s Five Worst Teen Jobs

  1. Traveling Youth Sales Crews
  2. Construction and Height Work
  3. Outside Helper: Landscaping, Groundskeeping and Lawn Service
  4. Agriculture: Harvesting Crops
  5. Driver/Operator: Forklifts, Tractors, and ATV’s

[The five worst jobs for teens are not ranked in order]

It’s that time of the year. Teenagers are starting to think about their summer jobs. Where will they work? What kind of work will they do? What will it pay?

In 2008, approximately 2.3 million adolescents aged 15 to 17 years worked in the U.S. Unfortunately, the global recession has impacted teen hiring here in the U.S. and jobs are particularly hard to come by for teens these days. According to the New York Times in April 2010, the U.S. economy lost 8.2 million jobs in the previous two years and the teen unemployment rate had risen 26 percent, compared to 9.7 percent for the nation at large. Increasingly, teens are competing with more experienced adults for jobs. The National Consumer League (NCL) worries that the difficulty in finding jobs will lead teens to take jobs that are too dangerous for them.

Read more