The season of child death

With the beginning of summer "May- October" of every year large numbers of children are being pushed to work at the fields as summer is considered the season during which the important and strategic crops are being planted and harvested in Egypt. Those crops are corn cotton, rice, tomatoes and most of the fruits.

The ages of those children are between 5-6 years to 18. They work at fields under severe work conditions can be described as inhuman and not proper to their childhood beginning with their transportation using trucks and tractors from the villages to the fields, passing by a hard day begins at 6 o'clock in the morning till 6 o'clock at the evening under the heat of the sun. They do all the kinds of agricultural work that exposes them to enormous numbers of accidents. The studies and live witnesses recorded the death of large numbers of children as a result of a sun strike, poisoned, road accidents. The long workday has only a short break for lunch usually consists of a piece of cheese and a tomato. This day ends with putting those children again into the trucks and tractors to return them back to their villages. The wages of those children range between 3 and 5 Egyptian pounds. After cutting off the percentage of the contractor who gathers them from the villages.

Now we are not discussing the reasons of the child labour problem and the circumstances of it as there are many reasons such as the bad economic conditions of their families and the policies and legislations resulted in more poverty and pushing many families in the Egyptian countryside to the poverty basket after they used to be in fairly good conditions. The effect of those legislations is so clear if we looked at one of them, which is law 96 for 19992, which resulted in kicking out around a million farmers of their lands, which they used to posses for more than 40 years. And which used to be their only income resource. The law has the same effects as many legislations and governmental policies aiming to liberate the prices and follow the market policies in the agricultural scale, without any study for the impact of these policies on the farmers and their economic and social rights.

And despite of we are not discussing here the reasons of child agricultural labour or the circumstances, we call for immediate actions and procedures to surround this problem and minimize its effects on the children and the community.

The first procedure we are calling for is to issue a new legislation protects and organizes the work of these children. Though the international conventions forbidden the child labour and consider it a crime, the Egyptian legislation neglects his problem. The labour law 12 for the year 2003 excepts the child labour at the agriculture at the same time while it protects children working at other economic sectors and organizes their work. It also neglected the insurance and social security systems for hose children. Whoever falls injured or sick during the work hours is not being compensated or medically treated even when the child falls dead his family do not receive any compensation. The reality is that the state neglect to the agriculture child labour problem is stupidity. The state does not confess that problem based on that the children are helping their parents in the simple agricultural work. At the same time he legislations confessed that it is a problem but they did not give the children right and proper legal protection.

If we wanted to see the general picture in which there is many connected strings we should monitor some scenes;
First: the country follows policies result in wealth accumulation at he hands of a few landowners. Second: the low wages the child has comparing to the grownups.

Third: expelling those children out of the legal protection frame.

If we can see this picture well so we'll realize who benefits out of child labour and who pays the price.

Rural Studies Center demands and calls upon all those who are interested in working for the sake of this country and guaranteeing a better future for its citizens, we call upon all those who are interested in solving he child labour problem, we call them to support our campaign to make some pressure on the government and the legislative authorities to issue a law protects and organizes the child labour at the agricultural sector and guarantees their insurance and social security rights.