by Emily Chan

Imagine you’re sitting and making toys in China to help pay for your families’ living needs. You have been working for hours and hours. Then, you realize that the 30 cents an hour wage that you’re receiving isn’t going to take you very far. Your hands and feet are getting tired, but you can’t take a break or you will be punished. Now, imagine that you’re 5 years old.

Unfortunately, this type of lifestyle isn’t that farfetched from the lives of many 5 to 14-year-old children around the world. Except instead of living in China, you could be living in Malaysia, Thailand, or Vietnam; instead of making toys, you could also be making shoes, clothing, rugs, chocolate, bananas, or coffee.

There are nearly one million children who are being exploited into making hand-knotted rugs all around the world. There are 250 MILLION children working in these sweatshops in third world countries. In Pakistan, 75% of their carpet-weavers are girls under age 14. Their needs are even more basic than ours; an education, freedom of speech, and equal pay. These are all things that many people take for granted.

The working conditions, as many know, are less than perfect (to say the least). In carpet factories, children are exposed to carpet dust, malnutrition, and beatings when they try to escape. They receive not only verbal and physical abuse, but also sexual abuse from their bosses. These children are also uneducated, which is something that all children are supposed to be promised. In a certain case, there was a four-year-old, Iqbal Masih, who was sold to a sweatshop by his parents. He was only able to escape at age ten, thanks to the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), which is a civil rights group. Iqbal’s life came to a tragic end when he was murdered, at age 12, when he was returning home. It was the same carpet industry that he used to work for that ended his life and stopped him from spreading his story.

So why would anyone willingly enforce these working conditions onto young children? The answer is money. It’s simple, easy, and cheap for manufacturers to have children work for wages that may as well not even exist. They are able to reap mass profits, and they are very rarely caught. When the inspectors come to make sure the workshop is running smoothly, the managers get a phone call first, to let them know of their arrival. Unfortunately, this warning is set so far ahead that the managers have enough time to get rid of all the child workers and replace them with adults who quickly rehearse what to say.

This is NOT ethical, and this is not right. There have been debates as to whether child labour is okay; if the children are out of jobs, then there will not be ANY income for the family. When you get down to it, it doesn’t matter! No matter what the cost, we must stop this. If we allow ourselves to take the easy road and agree that there’s nothing we can do, child labour will never end.

Here’s a better example for you. The 2003 National Labour Committee report stated that an average Honduran worker sews clothing for 43 cents an hour. After meals and transportation, this worker is left with 80 cents per DAY. This money must go towards rent, bills, childcare, school, medicine, emergencies, and whatever else. Not mentioning that these workers have probably taken out loans along the way that they need to pay off. So, they are already stuck in the whirlpool of exploitation, and the only way to get them out is to stop it all together.

Here’s another person taking the stand. Do you remember he young boy who was murdered because be escaped for the cotton sweatshop? Well, this death inspired 12-year-old Craig Kielburger (at the time) to start an organization to convince consumers to learn about the horrors of child labour and buy sweatshop-free products. This organization is known as Free the Children.

Usually, articles tend to end with the speech that we must get involved and end the horrors. In this article, you can sit back and relax, because some companies have beaten you to it. Some companies that have devoted their time into buying sweatshop free products are: Co-op America, No Sweat, and the popular American Apparel. The only thing that we need to do is support these anti-child labour businesses and organisations. If we are like the average citizen, we will spend that extra 28% to buy products that are sweatshop free.