Bonded Labour ensnares entire families in Afghanistan

A recent survey made in Afghanistan by the International Labour Organization has found that bonded labour in Afghanistan’s brick kilns is one of the most common forms of hazardous labour in the country. More than half of the brick kiln workers surveyed is children, mostly  under 14. Few are not getting any education to allow them to develop skills needed to break out of work in the kilns.

Most children have began working at the age of seven or eight, and almost 80 percent are under 10. According to the ILO, the kilns rely on debt bondage: Workers and their families are tied to a kiln by the need to pay off loans taken out for basic necessities, medical expenses, weddings and funerals.

The ILO report found that basic subsistence needs, have forced families to repeatedly take out loans, often paying for  winter’s food with a loan which they pay back over an entire season. Of the families surveyed, 64 percent had worked in the kilns for 11 years or more, and 35 percent had done so for more than 20 years.

The exact number of kilns in Afghanistan is unknown, but in Nangarhar Province’s Surkhroad District alone there are about 90, with 150-200 children working in each one. ILO estimates that Kabul Province’s Deh Sabz District has 800 kilns.

The ILO report says that it is due to necessity and extreme poverty that households enlist their children from an early age to work in the kilns. (niz)