Child Labor in Cambodia

Child Labor is defined as the work done by children below 18 years old, either paid or unpaid, that inimically affect the mental, physical, social, and moral progress of the children and prevents their education . It exists in various forms, ranging from the light form to the worst one, all around the world. If we have a look on this issue in Cambodia, we will be able to see clearly what kind of word is considered as Child Labor.

The MoSALVY has divided Child Labor in Cambodia into two main categories according to the sectors where they occur or are prevalent, one of which is the worst form such as the activities against Fundamental Human Right (Trafficking of children and women, using children in prostitution and phonography, and using children in drug production, sale and trafficking), Service sector (Child labor in pottering, child labor in domestic work, and child labor in waste scavenging or rubbish picking), Agriculture sector (child labor in rubber plantations, child labor in tobacco plantations, child labor in fishing activities (near-shore and deep-sea fishing), and child labor in semi-industrial agriculture plantations), Handcraft and Small scale industry (child labor in brick making enterprises, child labor in salt production and related enterprises, and child labor in handcrafts and related enterprises and, in processing of aquatic products such as crab or shrimp peeling), and in Stone and Refinery sector ( child labor stone or granite breaking, child labor in the collection of small stone from river beds and the seashore, rock and sand quarrying, and child labor in gem and coal mining), and the other form is not the serious one but also prevents children from going to school such as child who work in the restaurants or eateries, and children who sell products in the streets, etc.

However, this issue is little known and paid little attention to. Despite many forms of child labor in Cambodia, a vast majority of Cambodian university students, according to the information obtained by conducting questionnaires, approximately 80% of the respondents we ask, are slightly aware of the issue relating to child labor. It is reported that they know only the light forms of child labor such as children who work in the restaurants or eateries, children who sell things in the streets, orphans who wander in the street and rummage the rubbish in order to search for things to sell for survival, children who are forced by their parents to works as household workers in Phnom Penh, children who work as part-times workers in the agricultural sector, and those children who are in poverty-stricken families that have no opportunities to go to school. Only 10% of them answers they know quite a lot about child labor by watching TV, listening to the news broadcasting on the radio, reading documents containing the information relating to child Labor which are published my Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training, Cambodia, and other organization such as International Labor Organization in Cambodia (ILO). Yet there are still a number of students who do not aware of the issue. They say they haven’t any faintest ideas relating to Child Labor in Cambodia. To sum up, the conclusion to be drawn, based on the data we collected, is that Cambodian university students have more or less opportunities to see Child Labor in Cambodia and they also their concern toward the issue.

Of the questions we put in the questionnaire, there is a question asking the respondents to expression their own opinion about what we students can do in order to reduce Child Labor. Due to their response, there are two main good solutions to reduce child. They say that both government and all people of the country have to think and find way to tackle with the problem. Firstly, the government should reinforce the Labor Law by putting pressure on those who benefit from child labor and promoting children’s right. This means that the government should make it effective to get all people to adhere to the law. If, for example, the minimum age, determined by the law, at which children can work is 18 years old, the government should make sure that there are no children under that age go to work. Moreover, the main cause of child labor, as we know, is poverty. The government, therefore, should also deal with this problem using poverty reduction policies. One of the best ways proposed by those respondents to the government in order to eliminate child labor is through education. In rural areas where there are a lot people poor people, children are likely to give up their study at the young age because they need to work for survival, and some children, whose parents are farmers, are supposed to help their parents in the field. Because of this problem, the government, other agencies of the government and some non-governmental organization should help raise the awareness of the consequences of child labor as well as the significances of education. Far more than this, we students should also actively contribute to the society in helping eliminate child labor by volunteering and supporting the public information campaigns run by those institutions. We are very important in disseminating the information to our family, relatives, friends, neighbors, and local residents in our community. Far more than this, if all of us work together, resolutely and optimistically on this issue, Child labor will be eliminated in the near future.

In short, we can say that Child labor is one of the major problems that need to be eliminated if we want to see our country develops and to help people escape from poverty. In order to attain this goal, we students have to do something beneficial that can help raise people’s awareness about the issue and the importance of education to their future life. It should be noted that poverty raise child labor, and child labor creates poverty vice versa, so the root of child labor is poverty and the consequence of child labor is also poverty.