Nguyen Mai Oanh from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said it was high time the authorities cracked down on the exploitation of children. Laws on child protection, according to Lang, should be more specific to the many hundreds of ways companies get round the child-protection law. “When inspected, most firm owners claimed that they were employing their relatives’ children because their families had knowingly sent them to work. Few possessed ID cards, which meant inspectors found it hard to determine if the children were of working age,” she said.
Over 96 per cent of the children were employed by word of mouth without official documentation. DoLISA also found that those that had filed applications forms had had them filled in by relatives. Lang said the minimum working age should be raised from 15 to 16 and that children should not have to work more than seven hours a day. “Many employers are making use of the regulation to abuse children who are not strong enough to do the work,” Lang said.
Over 75 per cent of employees working in craft workshops, or as mechanics and domestics are children. 47.6 per cent of these are aged 13 to 15, while 4.7 per cent are under 13, according to figures provided by DoLISA inspectors.
Lang said there were too few inspectors to monitor child exploitation. It is common to have just one official managing family planning, demographics and children’s rights in many districts nowadays,” she said.
According to DoLISA’s last inspection, 69.4 per cent of firms failed to have business licences, 85.5 per cent had no records of the number of employees they had and 98.8 per cent had no social insurance. Lang said the department would conduct more spot checks on firms and punish those that infringed the child-protection law.
Source: Viet Nam News
