Child Labor
MrBrian
Posts: 2,672
Posted on Fri, Dec. 15, 2006
By Hans Greimel
Associated Press
SIALKOT, Pakistan - The ceaseless sound of tapping metal echoes through these muddy, garbage-strewn alleys where thousands of workers in crumbling brick hovels churn out one of Pakistan's most successful exports -- surgical instruments.
Home to more than 2,000 instrument makers, this city is one of the world's top producers of high-precision scalpels, forceps and retractors, almost all of which are bound for emergency rooms in the United States and other rich countries, where they help save lives.
Yet, most patients a world away are unaware that these tools are tarnished by the toil of children working in dank workshops clouded with metal dust and earning a few dollars a month.
That is starting to change, thanks to a U.N.-backed initiative to put child laborers back in school.
While the program underlines Pakistan's growing determination to tackle one of its biggest social scourges, it highlights how difficult eradicating child labor can be in a country where per capita income is $736 a year.
``I like to work,'' says 12-year-old Kabir Qadeer, who has done odd jobs at a dental instrument maker for the past year and a half for $18 a month.
Today, Qadeer is back in school -- albeit for only two hours a day after his seven-hour shift -- under a program sponsored by the U.N. International Labor Organization and the Surgical Instrument Manufacturers Association of Pakistan.
The next phase, through 2008, will target the remainder.
The problem lies primarily with subcontractors that make as much as 70 percent of the finished product for bigger companies. There are 2,000 of the tiny workshops, sometimes employing only a couple of people each and often operating below the radar of monitors. Precision work on heavy equipment such as lathes is not usually done by children, but they are routinely employed in jobs such as cleaning and sorting.
International outcry about surgical instruments is quiet, partly because Sialkot's medical goods are resold countless times by international wholesalers.
Sialkot's roots in surgical instruments stretch centuries to the Punjabi swordsmiths of the Mogul empire. Today, international buyers may pay Sialkot suppliers $2 for forceps that eventually fetch upward of $60 when sold to a hospital, said Syed Waseem Abbas, senior vice chairman of the surgical instrument manufacturers association, and chief executive of Professional Hospital Furnishers.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/16246263.htm?source=rss
I try to avoid products made by kids as much as possible, like shoes, jeans and whatever else. But if I was on the emergency table and the doctors were like "we need to use this instrument or you'll die" I don't think my boycott would last very long.
How sad is it, even the tools that save so many of our lives are made by kids in some far away place.
By Hans Greimel
Associated Press
SIALKOT, Pakistan - The ceaseless sound of tapping metal echoes through these muddy, garbage-strewn alleys where thousands of workers in crumbling brick hovels churn out one of Pakistan's most successful exports -- surgical instruments.
Home to more than 2,000 instrument makers, this city is one of the world's top producers of high-precision scalpels, forceps and retractors, almost all of which are bound for emergency rooms in the United States and other rich countries, where they help save lives.
Yet, most patients a world away are unaware that these tools are tarnished by the toil of children working in dank workshops clouded with metal dust and earning a few dollars a month.
That is starting to change, thanks to a U.N.-backed initiative to put child laborers back in school.
While the program underlines Pakistan's growing determination to tackle one of its biggest social scourges, it highlights how difficult eradicating child labor can be in a country where per capita income is $736 a year.
``I like to work,'' says 12-year-old Kabir Qadeer, who has done odd jobs at a dental instrument maker for the past year and a half for $18 a month.
Today, Qadeer is back in school -- albeit for only two hours a day after his seven-hour shift -- under a program sponsored by the U.N. International Labor Organization and the Surgical Instrument Manufacturers Association of Pakistan.
The next phase, through 2008, will target the remainder.
The problem lies primarily with subcontractors that make as much as 70 percent of the finished product for bigger companies. There are 2,000 of the tiny workshops, sometimes employing only a couple of people each and often operating below the radar of monitors. Precision work on heavy equipment such as lathes is not usually done by children, but they are routinely employed in jobs such as cleaning and sorting.
International outcry about surgical instruments is quiet, partly because Sialkot's medical goods are resold countless times by international wholesalers.
Sialkot's roots in surgical instruments stretch centuries to the Punjabi swordsmiths of the Mogul empire. Today, international buyers may pay Sialkot suppliers $2 for forceps that eventually fetch upward of $60 when sold to a hospital, said Syed Waseem Abbas, senior vice chairman of the surgical instrument manufacturers association, and chief executive of Professional Hospital Furnishers.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/16246263.htm?source=rss
I try to avoid products made by kids as much as possible, like shoes, jeans and whatever else. But if I was on the emergency table and the doctors were like "we need to use this instrument or you'll die" I don't think my boycott would last very long.
How sad is it, even the tools that save so many of our lives are made by kids in some far away place.
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Fri Dec 22, 3:00 AM ET
SIALKOT, PAKISTAN - In this bustling commercial hub near the Kashmiri border, fortunes seem to rise and fall with the Nike swoosh. Some 80 percent of the world's soccer balls are produced here by Nike and other top sports brands - making Sialkot, a city of 3 million, a model of prosperity in a country where poverty and extremism freely intermingle.
But there is a controversy behind this pot of gold. In November, Nike severed its contract with Saga Sports, its chief supplier, saying Saga's poor management exposes Nike to the threat of child labor and other labor violations.
The incident, observers say, highlights the moral dilemma of first-world corporations using third-world labor. And since it is Pakistan, the outcome may be more pressing than elsewhere in the world.
Many say a surge of unemployment and falling profits in Sialkot, a rare oasis, is the last thing a Pakistan struggling with militant Islam and poverty needs.
A soul-searching debate is now coursing through the country: Child labor is universally condemned, but is it fair for multinationals to cut and run when incidents arise of children working? Or do corporations have an obligation to work to fix these problems themselves?
For Nike's part, the Beaverton, Oregon-based firm stated in a November press release that it will continue working with contract factories in China and Thailand to supply hand-stitched balls. Nike's contracts with Saga will expire in March.
About Saga's 5,000 stitchers, it added: "n this case, the company exhausted all options and was left with no alternative but to cease orders, despite the potential impact to workers and the near-term effect on Nike's soccer ball business."
Gloomy-looking executives at Saga Sports, 70 percent of whose work is for Nike, say they're confident they can keep the company on board. The US Embassy recently told the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce that Nike will continue its other textile operations with existing contractors in Pakistan, according to unofficial statements from American officials.
By severing its contract with Saga, Nike is likely to score moral points with its customers in the West. But it's also likely, observers agree, to sink Saga, a corporate giant that makes about 6 million of Pakistan's annual production of 40-million soccer balls.
Saga estimates that as many as 20,000 families could be affected, since 70 percent of the local market relies on them for work.
"Definitely, Saga did wrong. But does the wrong they did warrant Nike leaving?" asks Nasir Dogar, chief executive of the Independent Monitoring Association for Child Labor (IMAC), which oversees compliance at Sialkot's 3,000 soccer-ball stitching centers.
Sialkot's hand-stitched ball industry, about a century old, is big business: Saga Sports alone accounted for $33 million of the industry's $210 million total. For Sialkot's 45,000 stitchers, who earn less than $100 a month on average, soccer balls are a way of life.
But for as long as there have been soccer balls in Sialkot, the hands of children have stitched them. That is not unusual in Pakistan, where a per capita income of about $2,800 commonly drives children to work. According to UNICEF estimates, more than 3 million boys and girls below age 14 work in Pakistan.
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