because employers can quickly see the benefits to the enterprise as well as the ethical importance of child labour-free, safe and healthy workplaces.
Protecting rural children from hazardous work in agriculture
It is not so difficult to see hazardous work of children when it occurs in population centres; and once seen, it is easier to work out what to do about it. The situation is very different in outlying regions of the country – subsistence farming areas, range land, vast mono-crop plantations, forests, the deserts and mountainous areas where mining sites are located, remote islands, and so on. We cannot just forget about these because they are too difficult. The children who live and work there deserve protection too.
Leadership by the community
It is somewhat easier to prevent hazardous work of children by ensuring that all children go to school and to provide social protection for families that are struggling to make ends meet than it is to reach children who are already caught in some form of hazardous work. The large proportion of these children will not be in school, so teachers will not notice their absence; they may well be working in out-of-the way places, so the ordinary public and social agencies will not see them; they are likely in informal workplaces, where the labour inspectors will not be passing very often, if at all. If what they are doing is known to be illegal or socially shameful, the children themselves may try to avoid being seen. How do you find them?
The “child labour monitoring” (CLM) system was developed as a temporary support to the labour inspectorate in reaching the informal economy workplaces where child labour occurs most frequently and where almost all jobs pose some sort of physical or psychological risk. In its simplest form, a three-person team of community members (such as a school teacher, mothers’ club member or retired policeman) are given training in how to monitor child labour. They then periodically visit places where children are likely to be working. If they find a child, they report the case to a specially constituted community committee, as well as to the labour inspector or local government authority for follow-up. Depending on the child’s situation, the committee will recommend a course of action, e.g. in the case of younger children this is usually removal from the workplace and their placement in an appropriate educational programme; in the case of older youth it may be improvement and monitoring of the work environment; assistance to the family is another option.