Child Labour in Thailand

Child Labour in Thailand

Not all as it seems- The beauty of Thailand

Child labour refers to the employment of children (underage) in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful. It goes against the human rights that every child has a right to be protected from being hurt badly in any way. Child labour usually takes place in third world developing countries due to their lack poor economy which leads to lack of education resulting to children’s futures looking very bleak; children without money to pay for an education need to support their families financially and therefore look for any work possible. Businessmen and women take advantage of this and pay the children minimum wages and give them overworked hours. Jobs that children may take part as such as mining, factory work, sexual and commercial exploitation.  However sometimes it is cultural believe that child labour is a positive thing. Some view that work is good for the character-building and skill development of children. In many cultures the cultural tradition is that children follow in their parents' footsteps; child labour then is a means to learn and practice that trade from a very early age. In other people believe the education of girls is less valued or girls are simply not expected to need formal schooling, and these girls pushed into child labour such as providing domestic services.

Thailand is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia; it is the 51^st largest country in the world in area, slightly smaller than Yemen yet slightly larger than Spain. Thailand enjoys a high level of literacy, and education is provided by a well-organized school system. The private sector of education is well developed and significantly contributes to the overall provision of education which the government would not be able to meet through the public establishments. Education is compulsory up to and including age group 14 and the government provides free education through to age group 17. This is excellent as it follows the human right that every child has the right to an education. However despite all this teachers are not properly trained and at time do not know what to teach the children and have lack of facilities to give to the students. For these reasons parents often ponder as to whether it is worth sending their children there when they could be earning money. Its economy is shaping up having recovered from an economic crisis in 1999 yet despite all this there is still poverty leading to child labour.

Children being deprived of their rights and hard at work

It has been estimated that a staggering 4 million children are in the child labour industry in Thailand! The types of work these children are being forced to endure are such as agriculture and the shrimp and seafood processing industries. Children in agriculture help to produce sugarcane. Children reportedly work in the production of cassava, corn and rice and in harvesting seeds. These children are often exposed to long working hours, the use of dangerous tools and pesticides. Children (often boys) work in fishing and are often a subject of abuse and harsh working conditions being forced to carry heavy loads and work with hazarder’s equipment and yet they are paid a ridicules minimum wage. There are also children who have to work at entertainment venues, restaurants and venues may sound better but they are exposed to excessive working hours, night working hours and high levels of noise, dust and smoke- not the type of issues a young child should have to experience. Children, primarily girls, work in domestic service, which may result in excessive work hours, physical and sexual abuse from their employers and the inability to leave their employer’s home. A lot of children are sexually exploited and are normally trafficked from different countries such as Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos and Vietnam to Thailand just to be used sexually. It is one of the rights that a child should not be illegally taken away from their country, yet children are being taken away to be abused which is committing a crime according to the child right children should be protected from sexual abuse.

So what are the government doing about it? There is a campaign that is aiming to achieve a country where worst forms of child labour do not exist; this is known as the National Policy Plan. It is designed to protect not just Thailand’s children but non Thailand children who have been trafficked from foreign countries.  However, the NPP lacks operational targets and indicators as well as specific budget allocations and goals; the government have not taken a big part in this organisation and have merely approved it. How can a country be child labour free if the campaigns are not getting full support of the government? The organisations need funds to carry out their work and a certain guideline to help them with what they need to do, which is something this organisation lacks. Campaigns do not have a lot of authority, they may fight for what they believe, get demonstrations and people to support their point but they do not have any power among citizens or the people that control child labour. So in that case the government needs to step up and get more involved in the situation and influence their authority to prevent the labour children are enduring.

Campaigns to STOP child labour 

However, the Government created Central and Provincial Operation Centres for Providing Assistance to Women and Child Labourers. The centres coordinate efforts among relevant agencies to combat the worst forms of child labour. They also collect and disseminate information on the worst forms of child labour and report their activities to the National Committee. Alongside all of this the government contributed $100,000 to the centres. This is an amazing organisation done by the government who should be extremely proud of their work. Women and children can socialise with those who have been through similar ordeals, they get the opportunity to speak to specialists who can help them come to terms with what they’ve been through. This also helps raise the governments’ awareness about child labour and what action they can take to fight it. However to find out information the people at the centre have to bring up the topic of what these people have been through which is the worst type of child labour which can be distressing and mental harmful, especially to young people.

In 2010, the Government began participating in a $9 million, USDOL-funded project to eliminate child labour in the shrimp and seafood processing industry. The project aims to strengthen policy frameworks to protect the rights of Thailand and migrant children; work with the shrimp and seafood processing industry to better comply with labour laws; and provide education and other services to children and families in the targeted areas who are engaging or may be at risk of engaging in exploitative labour. Over the life of the project, over 7,000 children were removed or were prevented from entering into the worst forms of child labour through the provision of educational services. This is an excellent step forward to deal with child labour as it helps children receive the education they are entitled to and open up many opportunities to the future generations of Thailand; it will also help the countries economy as more children being able to read and write will lead to more developed jobs in the future increasing the GPD. The government have also spent a lot of money on this project meaning they are serious about sorting out the issues in Thailand, which is quite a risk seeing as they are still developing.

Overall I feel the government are taking risks to improve the situation in Thailand and are giving children to live a better and enjoy their rights. There are a few errors but a fantastic job is being done.

My UK Budget

My UK Budget

Cuts, cuts, cuts. It’s become the talk of the nation what should and shouldn't be cut, how the people of the nation are having to suffer, how poor the government is; well have you ever wondered what you would do if you had the power to control the UK budget? Well I have, here are my thoughts.

The Ministry of Defence are currently at a budget of £39bn. It is my aim to increase that amount by £7bn; therefore allowing this department to have a budget of £46bn. My reasons for this are that the ministry of defence have been noted to have very little budget to supply the right equipment and training for our troops and armed forces. The Defence Committee Third Report reported their concern over the cuts in the defence science and technology research budget. It is my fear that the equipment are being prevented to grow and develop into weapons and medical aids that could prove to be useful in battle and in saving lives; if this happens we are in great danger of failure for the future UK defence cabilities, combatants and equipment. There is also a fear that equipment is at a risk of being under funded putting our troops at risk. Fist Sea Lord and Chief of Naval also noted that Defence of Ministry did not have enough money and were in a future for tough decisions. The fact that this department was not getting enough money for equipment is evident in the statistics that they overspent their budget by £6.5bn. My idea of an increase of £7bn will prevent overspending happening and will allow the Ministry of Defence to be fully equipped. One of the main goals of the Ministry of Defence is to supply the correct equipment, allowing them to do that with extra money will help them achieve their main goals and open up opportunities for the development of future equipment and human minds of technology. 

However, allowing the ministry of defence to have extra money when most of our troops are being moved out of Afghanistan may be considered as a waste of time and a waste of money; if our troops are going to be fighting less why give them more when they should be getting cuts? They have often been criticised in the past for poor management of finances which have forced past prime ministers to introduce cuts such as Gordon Brown in 2009. It is a concern of mine that extra money will encourage them to overspend or will mislead them to thinking the have a lot more money to spend and do not need to budget as much. We don’t their bad budget skills to get worse!

Britain's MOD

Educations, as a department, are on a budget of £91bn; I would like to increase that amount by just £1bn. I had a little debate myself as to whether they should get an increase at all. This may come as a surprise as education is the factor to enable our economy to grow. However, the government are aware of that and have made it one of the departments to protect form costs; despite all this I still feel it is in need of some money as it has been suffering some cuts. There have been some big cuts in the infrastructure side of education and 81% was cut as a result of the scrapping Building schools for Future programme. This has caused there to be limited space for children entering primary school. More money will help the development of new schools and will allow children to be put in the best suited primary school for them rather than being put into anyone that just has the space. A downside on increasing the budget for education is that it may not be completely necessary as I have mentioned before they are the most protected from cuts and are managing.

Children not being able to do the above due to cuts?

Health is also another department protected by the government and have only suffered a small amount of cuts therefore I would like to keep the budget the same at £130bn. My decision is based on the increases the department has been granted, such as: a rise on PESA by 0.02% and% in Resource DEL. I am also concerned about where all the NHS money is being spent as results show some money for the NHS are not being channelled through the department of health, or DEL are overspending. Either way I cannot allow extra money to be spent on a department where the spending of the Budget is not clear. However, I am not willing to make any cuts due to the cuts they have already been suffering: 1% in dental services and 11.2% in Capital DEL.

To supply the money for Ministry of Defence and Education I have cut the welfare budget of £8bn, giving them a total of £199bn. My cut are manly directed at the job seekers allowance (which had been increased by 7.58%) in order to encourage them to start working fast and help contribute to the economy; this may increase the percentage of those at work and prevent citizens from getting out of work. On the other hand this may make life very difficult for the families with parents on job seekers allowance and may even cause parents to take from their child’s benefits causing the young generation to be robbed of their rights.

Wishful thinking! Well it can't harm anyone and it certainly gets my point across so why not? I don't wish to offend anyone with my decisions and am happy to respond to any comments as I love a debate! So please feel free to put your points across!

What do you think?