Child Labour Still Seen as “Tradition” in Uzbekistan

IWPR Central Asia

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

Thursday, 25 March, 2010

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Aghzam, 13, looks forward to foul weather as that is when he makes most money cleaning the mud off cars. 

“Rain or snow is best,” he said. “The cars get spattered with dirt quickly. I can earn about five US dollars in a day.”

Like many kids his age – and younger – Aghzam has to work to augment his family’s meagre income, although he only does so after the end of the school day. His father works on building sites and does not earn much, while his mother is at home looking after his younger brother.

The issue of child labour in Uzbekistan has hit international headlines in recent years with revelations about the recruitment of minors to tend and harvest the cotton crop, a major export earner for the state. A boycott by major western clothing retailers in 2007 prodded the Uzbek government into action, and in 2008 the state ratified two international documents, the Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour and the Convention Concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment.

National labour legislation in Uzbekistan sets the minimum working age at 16.

The standards employed by the International Labour Organisation differentiate between various kinds of work performed by children, saying light work should be allowed only after the age of 12 or 13, heavier tasks from the 14-16 age range, while work described as “hazardous” should be outlawed for anyone under 18.

OFFICIAL DENIAL, PRIVATE JUSTIFICATION

Ratification of the two conventions and the approval of a national action plan were followed by official statements – around the time of the autumn 2008 cotton harvest – that child labour no longer existed. Despite that, there were widespread eyewitness accounts of children in the fields during that harvest, in the following spring’s planting season, and again in the autumn 2009 harvest. (See Uzbekistan: Child Labour Continues Despite Formal Ban.)

When pressed on the issue, representatives of the Uzbek government say that if any children are still out at work, it is because their parents want them to. The highly organised nature of cotton farming in Uzbekistan, where the state instructs farmers what to grow, provides extra labour and then buys the crop at well below its true market value, makes this a less than credible defence in the eyes of governments critics. They point out that the state education authorities were still allowing, if not encouraging, pupils to go off and help with the harvest last autumn, and that schools had even been set their own production targets.

Children also continue to perform adult jobs in urban settings. They can be seen behind shop counters, serving in cafes, shining shoes and carrying heavy loads at markets and train stations. The state does not play an overarching role in directing this kind of economic activity, but it does not appear to be acting to prevent children working.

A personnel manager with a public transport company in Tashkent said it was common to see young children working as bus conductors.

“Of course everyone knows about it – how could you conceal it?” she said. “They take the children off [the buses] whenever there’s an [official] inspection.”

The conductor jobs generally went to the children of bus drivers, who paid them a fraction of the adult wage, of course without going through official channels, she said, adding that she had got her own son one of these jobs so as to augment her family’s income.

“I know it’s too early for the boy to be doing this kind of thing, but we don’t have a choice,” she said, “My husband’s gone off to work in Russia but he hasn’t sent a penny home to his children in the last two years.”

Another mother, a nurse in a Tashkent clinic, also pleaded poverty as an excuse for getting her children to work.

“We have four children, and although my husband and wife both work, we don’t manage to earn much,” she explained. “Our elder son, who’s 15, and our 14-year-old daughter work. For example, the girl helps the hospital orderlies after school.”

Ghofur, a civil servant in the labour ministry, says it is traditional for children in Uzbekistan to help the family business.

“Children in Uzbekistan have always helped their parents, especially in the villages,” he said. “In the countryside it isn’t seen as a violation of child rights, it’s customary and natural, just as it’s natural for people in urban areas to take their children to the park or to the cinema. It’s also a natural thing for the children. It’s partly the traditional way of life, and partly the fact that they don’t have anything else to occupy themselves with.”

SCEPTICISM ABOUT NEW PENALTIES

Effective from February 1, Uzbek law imposes fines ranging between 120 to 245 US dollars for employers and parents who endanger children’s health and safety by sending them out to work.

Analysts interviewed by IWPR when the law went through the lower house of parliament last November cast doubt over the effectiveness of this measure, given that children had been seen working in the cotton fields in autumn 2009 despite official denials that this was happening. (For a report on this, see Tougher Penalties for Child Labour in Uzbekistan.)

“Why should I face a fine?” asked Qudrat Valiev who owns a café in Tashkent’s Fergana bazaar, where his 15-year-old daughter Malika works behind the counter, and two younger children have also started helping out. “For bringing my children up not to be afraid of work, of getting them to help their parents? I don’t see why she shouldn’t work outside school hours.”

An auditing officer with a Tashkent commercial firm said she doubted that the penalties would work, not least since underage “employees” never appear in any paperwork.

“No employer will take a minor on officially. They turn a blind eye when they work unofficially and paid without this going through the accounts,” she said.

Surat Ikramov, who heads the Initiative Group of Human Rights Defenders, said that in grey areas, it was more difficult to prove that employers were using child labour than when minors were dispatched en masse to pick cotton. “If they close a school and force all the children to go out into the fields, that’s coercion,” said Ikramov. “But if minors are voluntarily working on their parents’ land, or in the shop or café they own, how should one interpret that? Who is going to regard it as a breach of child rights?”

"NO NEED TO COUNT" WORKING CHILDREN, SAY OFFICIALS

Abdurahmon Tashanov of the Ezgulik Human Rights Group in Tashkent doubts that legislating against child labour will work.

He said that in the countryside, “government agencies, the prosecution service and the police are themselves implicated in exploiting child labour. It stands to reason that these agencies are not going to hold themselves to account.”

More generally, he said, “there isn’t a single mechanism working to eliminate child labour in Uzbekistan. Neither state nor [non-government[ public organisations are taking upon themselves to run programmes designed to fix this problem.”

A civil servant at the ministry of labour and welfare, who did not want to be named, confirmed that the authorities were not gathering basic data on the scale of child labour. “We don’t even count how many children are working instead of attending school,” he said. “The thinking is that the problem doesn’t exist, hence there’s no need to count them.”

(The names of many interviewees have been withheld out of concern for their security.)

This article was produced under IWPR’s Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media programme, funded by the European Commission. The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of IWPR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.