number of establishments, to seeing that they have a decent salary, and to creating regular opportunities for career improvement and training, as for example on child labour issues, the inspectorate has great potential to effect change. Looking at the case of Turkey for the moment, we see that it placed child labour as one of the central objectives of its national economic and social policy. This made it possible to take a holistic approach, one which integrated the struggle against child labour into the work of several government bodies with the labour inspectorate as the entry point. The Labour Inspection Bureau brought strong assets to the problem of hazardous work of children: it has an extensive staff and field structure and a national-level role in policy-making, and at the same time has direct contact with the enterprises that hire children and youth.
Reducing hazardous work of children through technology change
The manufacture of hand-knotted carpets is an important craft-based industry in rural areas of several Asian, North African and Middle Eastern countries, where labour is abundant and cheap. The rising demand for carpets, coupled with low wages, illiteracy and availability of children for this highly labour-intensive industry, has created ripe conditions for use of children as carpet weavers. A survey in Pakistan in 2002 found 154,956 carpet-weaving children in the Punjab province alone, with 69 per cent in the age group 5–14 years . Carpet-weaving one of the prohibited occupations under the law in Pakistan for children below the age of 14, but since the law is not applicable in homes; child labour is widely used by poor families in rural areas and provides an important source of livelihood.
A 2010 health study with control groups showed that the carpet-weavers most commonly suffer from musculoskeletal problems (carpal tunnel syndrome, knee problems as well as low back pain and pain in neck and shoulders), due to the crouched position in which they work and the extensive use of their wrists, fingers and shoulders during weaving. Girls experienced more musculoskeletal disorders than boys because they tended to work longer hours and had less physical exercise and poorer nutritional status. These were exacerbated, in turn, by the poor sanitation, lack of first aid and lack of light and ventilation in poor households, with the result that these workers were more likely to suffer from respiratory illnesses and other diseases related to living style).
Among weaving children, as compared with a control group, social and psychological stresses were more common and intense. For example, the data indicate that carpet-weaving children are more likely to suffer physical punishment, and a remarkably high proportion suffer from cuts and bruises. These conditions of work are conducive to neither productivity nor quality, since the more experienced the workers become, the more health problems they are likely to encounter; thus gradually the industry loses good experienced workers and has to rely on children, who can only deliver comparatively poorer-quality products.