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Children in Beni Suef Marble Quarries
In the context of the
appalling conditions of the child labor in Egypt, the phenomenon of child labor
in the marble quarries in Beni Suef governorate shows how the government insists
on its neglect of the child question. Throughout the country, particularly in
the villages of Beni Suef and the region of Kremat in Giza and Upper Egypt the
phenomenon of child labor in marble quarries spreads unhindered.
On June 30/1998, one of the quarries collapsed in Gabal Alnour village where the children working there tottered and fell among the rubles. Only God saved them from death as the accident resulted in seven children injured. The children injured were:
Mohamed Sayed Omran (13 years old) ,Sanaa Aly Magawry (12 years old ) Entessar Mahmoud Ahmed (14 years old )Sayed Shehab (15 years old ),Abu Zaid Algohary (12 years old ) Hayam Abdol Aziz (10 years old )Mahmoud Mohammed Algohary (14 years old).
The work in the quarries, where stones are obtained for industry by blasting, depends mainly on child labor although it requires a high level of safety measures. Most of the children working there inherited the craft from their ancestors, where they receive scant wages of LE 5 for a working day of 12 hours. Workers in quarries have no legal rights and they enjoy neither health insurance nor social security.
The number of children working in Beni Swif marble quarries is estimated at 600 children, with 75 percent of surrounding rural population depending on them for subsistence.
Labor contractors bring children from the surrounding villages to the quarries and usually oversee the children working and set the amount of wages paid every week.
The children go every morning before sunrise, covering a distance of 2 km on foot to the quarries, where a contractor divides them into groups, each handling one part of the job.
The work in a marble quarry runs through several phases:
Phase One: involves the breaking large stones into middle size units to pass through the opining of the quarry.
Phase Two: involves carrying stones to a specific mill where they will be crushed into even smaller units.
Phase Three: passing the product through a sieve to sort out different sizes of stones.
Phase Four: Classifying every kind of stone and storing it in special warehouses.
Phase Five: Loading stone production on lorries.
Phase Six: Transporting the resulting powder.
Phase Seven: Sieving the powder to extract out the toxic materials used in the chemical industry.
The children work for 12 hours a day without any legal protection or social insurance. Their age ranges from 10 to 21 years and they work for very low wages. In case of injury, a child receives treatment by a private doctor without informing the police station or receiving compensation.
If the injury caused disability, the child will be fired without compensation. In addition, many children catch asthma because of the marble powder.
The Land Center for Human Rights (LCHR) brought a communiqué No 937/1998 against the owners of marble quarries to the Prosecutor General in an attempt to bring an end to the violation of the children rights.
The center has also filed a lawsuit No.1748/1998 before the Court of Southern Cairo against the Minister of Social Affairs and the Minister of the Labor Force for their omission of the phenomenon.
Noteworthy, according to the Labor Law No.137/1987, the Labor Force Department is responsible for overseeing the work in the quarries and to record such encroachments to file lawsuits against employers violating the law.
Officials in the Labor Force Department in Beni Swif, however, claim that they have no information about the number of workers or the employers in the marble quarries. They argue that employers usually hide the children once a labor inspector visits the area. Asked about their views of child labor in the quarries, however, they argued that the issue was very complicated as families depended on those children for livelihood.
Nevertheless, such an argument is not sufficient to justify the Labor Force Department's neglect of supervising work in the quarries in light of the lack of protection and insurance, arbitrary layoffs, and repeated industrial accidents.
The center wonders how could the responsible officials in the Ministry of the Labor Force allow children to work under such inhuman and dangerous conditions.
LCHR, therefore, appeals to the different ministries to take measures as necessary to end the phenomenon of child labor in the quarries. The center also urges the Minister of the Labor Force and the governor of Beni Swif to investigate this case and to bring those responsible of child labor abuses before the Court.