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The Right of Child Laborers in growth
What Is the Right of Growth?
With the right to grow, we do not mean longevity. Rather, it means that children should be secured protection against avoidable diseases through proper healthcare programs, safe food, and non-exhaustion at work. Such requirements are essential for the normal and healthy growth of our children.
Does the Child Laborer Enjoy This Right?
Unfortunately, children laborers live under severe conditions, deprived of the basic rights referred to above.
· Working hours: Children usually work more than ten hours a day, regardless of the weather conditions and without a lunch hour.
· Nature of work: Of course, it is unhealthy that the child be forced to stand on his feet or remain bowing the whole working day.
· Food: The diet presented to children laborers usually lacks essential ingredients, such as meat, milk, eggs, etc.
· Healthcare: A practitioner should regularly check children laborers as they usually use toxic substances at work, including pesticides, chemical dust and different gases.
Therefore, the children laborers are deprived of their right to normal growth, leading to unhealthy generation. Taking into consideration that seven in every ten families in rural and informal areas in Egypt have their children working, we may clearly envisage how bleak is the future of our country.
Urgently Needed Steps:
1. Reducing working hours to a maximum of six, with a paid weekend and at least two hours break.
2. Rising wages of children laborers to a minimum of six pounds per day.
3. Children laborers should receive a daily meal, containing adequate amounts of proteins and other necessary vitamins.
4. Preventing child labor in dangerous industries that may have negative effects on their health.
5. Providing children with health insurance and regular check up by a practitioner.
How Can We Carry Through These Steps?
6. In fact, Egyptian laws on the child and labor as well as the Constitution emphasize the child right to growth. Therefore, the parents of children laborers should cooperate with concerned NGOs and the Municipal and Village Councils to enforce such Constitutional guarantees. We have to use all legal procedures to convince different ministries of the legality and fairness of our demands. Moreover, we have to spread our demands through different villages and poor areas.