This week we are writing about child labour and our feelings towards it. My opinion is much like others’, it is wrong and it should stop. Many young children from the ages of 3 to 19 work in factories to pay off their families’ debt, this way these children may spend their entire childhood working in a factory and later in life not have a proper education and end up working there again. This is unfair compared to the privileges that we children have in Canada.
Many children in third world countries are born into a family with their life almost planned out for them. The children must go to work in a low paying job to pay off their parents’ debt. These children nor the parents have any way of knowing when the child will have done paying off the debt because they are never paid with physical money but with time. This way many ‘owners’ of factories trick the child or parents into thinking that they are close to paying off their debt, when in fact they aren’t. Thus, the factory owner makes the children work harder in hope to be finished soon when truthfully they have many years more. This can go on for a long duration until the owner is finished with that child. This usually happens when they are not children anymore, but adults who require fair pay, and who wants to pay an adult more for a job a child could do for less money?
Not only is the method of payment unjust to children but so are the circumstances they are required to work in. Most of these children are not even clothed properly for normal conditions let alone the job they are asked to do. For example, a child might be a metalworker that labours with hot and bright flames that can shine very brightly in their eyes and this child may not have any protective eyewear. This may cause long-term damage as well as short-term damage. This child may get burnt or develop bad eyesight from long hours they could also easily inhale toxic gases from the factory and grow lung diseases.
These child labourers are treated as slaves, maybe worse than that. They have no idea what life they could have but they just get through every day that hopefully in the near future, they will be free. These children are so naive and hard working that they do everything they are told without thinking about it, just because they are told to. None go to school and are not ever taught how to properly read or right and none are aware of the wonderful and interesting features of the world around them. They will never know how many beautiful things our world has to offer and will never get to explore them. The few that have the chance of going to school do, those children are considered as privileged when others in Canada and other fortunate areas in the world complain about school and have no idea how lucky they are.
The adults that use child labour should be stopped. In these third world countries there are laws to protect these children or and those that are against child labour, but these laws are not followed. In these countries, the government usually ignores this unfair treating of children because this child labouring usually help the rest of the country. This is a very sick thing to do, get children to work from dawn to dusk in dangerous jobs for cheap labour for the country to make more profit. These countries use their child labour to make more profits than they are paying their workers, and the government ends up getting most of it. Most of the money even made by these children are taken by taxes the government later collects.
People in other fortunate countries that have power should take action because if anyone can make a difference, it would be them. This should happen soon because the longer time that is waited the more children will be mistreated.
I think that these parents should find ways for their children to be able to work and learn because it is not fair that they do not get a proper childhood. Truth be told, they will end up working in a job like that when they are older so they should get a chance to be a kid when they still are.
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