Child Labor in Indian Stone Quarries
The sun is burning and it is hotter than 40 degrees in the Indian quarries, where three boys embrace a big jackhammer. It makes their body vibrate. Without mouthpiece and ear-protection they crush stone walls. Their faces are colored in white, because of the dust which ruins their lungs.
Other children bring explosive powder into the quarry. It is a highly dangerous activity, because if sparks fly, sometimes parts of the body can be blasted off. They toil for a hunger wage to win natural stone for grave stones, tabletops and garden tiles. The most important reason for child labor in the Indian quarries is the poverty of the parents. An investigation shows that between 50 and 60% of child workers come from families whose income falls below the international poverty line of 1$ / day. 211 million children are under 15 years, 186 million of these children work in exploitative conditions in the Indian quarries.
This work is characterized bylong working hours, sometimes 12 to 16 hours without sufficient breaks. There arehazardous working conditions in physical and psychological terms. The children get a small fee and no social insurance if they get sick or in an accident. There is no access to school for those children, so they don’t get an education and so their children probably will work in the quarry, too.
It’s a kind of vicious circle. They live on a garbage dump where there are neither toilets nor clean drinking water. Because of that and of the dust there are many health hazards.
Through the dust during the stone work it comes to allergies, skin and eye diseases as well as silicosis. In addition to that the children get injuries from hammers, chisels and drills. Malaria is a frequent disease among child workers. Often girls are raped by migrant workers or truck drivers.
The frequently asked question “Why do children work in the quarry?”is easy to answer. Their parents are really poor because of landlessness, bad harvests and the overpopulation in India which results in smaller fields for the parents, so that they cannot get as much harvest as before.
Sometimes there is no school in the territory, which is why the children have to work in the quarries. A really big factor for children working in quarries is the bonded labor, when the quarries are closed from July to September because of the monsoon. Then the families go into debt with the owner with high interest rates.
The children inherit the debts of their parents and are therefore forced to work in the quarries. It is a big advantage for the employer to let children work for him, because he does not have to pay as much money for the children as for the adults and has less responsibility for them.
There are 52 Indian laws that were enacted to combat child labor. It threatens even jail sentences of up to three months. But the illegal quarries are secluded and guarded, so that unwanted viewers rarely come in. There are large gaps in their enforcement and compliance with protection laws is hardly found because the inspectors are overloaded. There are also reports of corruption of the authorities and an illicit cooperation of parents and contractors, to circumvent the prohibition of child labor. 80% of all the gravestones in Germany come from India. Germany receives almost 50,000 tons per year of natural stone from India.
In my opinion the topic of child labor in quarries is a very serious and sensitive one which needs to be addressed quickly. These children have poor prospects ahead for their future and will die early. Everyone can do something against it, namely buying stones which were mined under good working conditions and without child and slave labor.
Then perhaps the illegal quarries are less successful and will start to follow the law.
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