That of;
1. CHILD LABOUR
2. DEPRIVATION OF EDUCATION
Both these themes directly interlink with one another. Children are forced by their families to work in coffee plantations in various third-world countries in order to get more income therefore the parents can afford to put their children in school. A large percentage of the time, this is an unrealistic theory as in third-world countries, the families are much bigger in size, there is the issue of gender equality (most parents favour the male due to a sad belief that male's have a better chance of performing well in education therefore providing a hope for a better quality of life) and advancements of the level of education. Children experience the same poor living conditions as the adults, they are more vulnerable to diseases, their education is affected through their families low income level and their consequent need to help work to support their families at young fragile ages; reality of child labour.
I wanted to research further into the area of child labour, deprivation of education yet remaining my focus into the coffee sector. Thus, the following facts:
- Child labour is a prevalent problem in the coffee industry. In Kenya's central province workforce, 60% are children.
- Children may start working as soon as they are tall enough to reach the lower branches (average height: 3 - 3.5m therefore lower branches may well be 1m or below).
- Their tasks include: picking, spraying, sorting, fertilising, pruning, transporting, weeding
- In the coffee plantations of Honduras, children make up between 20%-40% of the workforce.
- The child labour in coffee sector in Tanzania is reported as one of the wort forms of child labour by ILO (International Labour Organisation)
CHILD LABOUR STATISTICS ON A MACRO SCOPE
Today, more than 250 million children between the ages of 5-14 work!
child in El Salvador coffee plantation
Source 1 : Statistics of Child Labour in Coffee sector
Source 2 : ILO website (International Labour Organisation)
