Uzbek Children Back in the Fields
Uzbek Children Back in the Fields
NBCentral Asia observers say the use of child labour seems to be creeping back into Uzbekistan’s cotton industry.
On May 21, the Ferghana.ru news site cited an RFE/RL Uzbek Service report that schoolchildren in the Khorezm region in northwestern Uzbekistan were being transported to the fields to work on a daily basis.
Children quoted in the report said all classes at school had been cancelled and they were sowing cottonseed and weeding the fields from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon.
A few days later, there were fresh reports of school and college students in other regions being used as labour on cotton plantations.
Observers in Uzbekistan confirm that this is the case, although they note that this year, local government has not been issuing instructions for minors to be deployed en masse for farm work.
“There’s been no question of [children] being bused out compulsorily,” said a local media-watcher.
Uzbekistan is a major cotton producer and exporter, growing over 3.5 million tons a year and exporting half of it.
The bulk of the cotton is picked by hand.
Up until 2008, child labour was widespread in Uzbekistan, and children as young as eight or nine years of age were forced to work in the cotton fields.
The Uzbek government came under mounting pressure from the international community, culminating in a boycott by major United States and British textile importers and clothing retailers.
In response, the Uzbek authorities announced last September that they were banning the use of child labour, and ratified the International Labour Organisation convention on eliminating the worst forms of child labour and the convention on the minimum age for employment.
Observers in Uzbekistan say that as spring work gets under way in the fields, local authorities are using a different strategy – financial incentives – to get children to work.
A cotton grower from the Jizzak region of central Uzbekistan said the local authorities were advising farmers to approach school heads and ask them to offer payment to children who wanted to earn some money.
Farmers are being told to pay child workers 5,000 or 6,000 Uzbek soms a day, which comes to just four or five US dollars.
“On no account is anyone to say this is an instruction from the authorities to dispatch everyone to do weeding,” said the Jizzak farmer, quoting the verbal instructions. “We need to try to talk them into it – children have a lot of expenditure but their parents don’t give them any money at home.”
A farm head in the Kashkadarya region in southern Uzbekistan says many schoolchildren are going to farmers and asking for work.
“When we were planting onions, we had about 40 local schoolkids working for us every day,” he said. “They were paid in cash.”
The question is whether the authorities will make an effort to halt the use of child labour during the peak harvesting season this autumn.
Tashpulat Yoldashev, an Uzbek political analyst now based abroad, says that given the targets the government has set for cotton production this year, it is almost inevitable children will be brought in to help.
“Although the areas planted under cotton has been cut and exports have fallen, the harvest plan is quite ambitious, and it won’t be possible without child labour.”
This view is shared by Sharofat, a schoolteacher from the Ferghana region, where schoolchildren work in the cotton fields every year. When picking begins in September, she says, “the authorities will not reject [child labour], since it’s effectively free labour, whereas hired workers need to be paid properly.”
(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service has resumed, covering Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.)
On May 21, the Ferghana.ru news site cited an RFE/RL Uzbek Service report that schoolchildren in the Khorezm region in northwestern Uzbekistan were being transported to the fields to work on a daily basis.
Children quoted in the report said all classes at school had been cancelled and they were sowing cottonseed and weeding the fields from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon.
A few days later, there were fresh reports of school and college students in other regions being used as labour on cotton plantations.
Observers in Uzbekistan confirm that this is the case, although they note that this year, local government has not been issuing instructions for minors to be deployed en masse for farm work.
“There’s been no question of [children] being bused out compulsorily,” said a local media-watcher.
Uzbekistan is a major cotton producer and exporter, growing over 3.5 million tons a year and exporting half of it.
The bulk of the cotton is picked by hand.
Up until 2008, child labour was widespread in Uzbekistan, and children as young as eight or nine years of age were forced to work in the cotton fields.
The Uzbek government came under mounting pressure from the international community, culminating in a boycott by major United States and British textile importers and clothing retailers.
In response, the Uzbek authorities announced last September that they were banning the use of child labour, and ratified the International Labour Organisation convention on eliminating the worst forms of child labour and the convention on the minimum age for employment.
Observers in Uzbekistan say that as spring work gets under way in the fields, local authorities are using a different strategy – financial incentives – to get children to work.
A cotton grower from the Jizzak region of central Uzbekistan said the local authorities were advising farmers to approach school heads and ask them to offer payment to children who wanted to earn some money.
Farmers are being told to pay child workers 5,000 or 6,000 Uzbek soms a day, which comes to just four or five US dollars.
“On no account is anyone to say this is an instruction from the authorities to dispatch everyone to do weeding,” said the Jizzak farmer, quoting the verbal instructions. “We need to try to talk them into it – children have a lot of expenditure but their parents don’t give them any money at home.”
A farm head in the Kashkadarya region in southern Uzbekistan says many schoolchildren are going to farmers and asking for work.
“When we were planting onions, we had about 40 local schoolkids working for us every day,” he said. “They were paid in cash.”
The question is whether the authorities will make an effort to halt the use of child labour during the peak harvesting season this autumn.
Tashpulat Yoldashev, an Uzbek political analyst now based abroad, says that given the targets the government has set for cotton production this year, it is almost inevitable children will be brought in to help.
“Although the areas planted under cotton has been cut and exports have fallen, the harvest plan is quite ambitious, and it won’t be possible without child labour.”
This view is shared by Sharofat, a schoolteacher from the Ferghana region, where schoolchildren work in the cotton fields every year. When picking begins in September, she says, “the authorities will not reject [child labour], since it’s effectively free labour, whereas hired workers need to be paid properly.”
(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service has resumed, covering Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.)
