Ministry has chosen Yangon, Bago, Ayeyawady, Kayin and Mon, for the child labour elimination pilot project, said Union Minister for Labour, Immigration and Population U Thein Swe.
“The majority of the regional developing countries are using youths and children who will contribute to the production capacity. It is found that the countries facing poverty-related challenges use more child workers. In Myanmar, there are 12.4 million child population aged between five and 17, around 0.6 million of who are in employment. Of them, 0.42 million population are child workers,” the minister added.
For the elimination of child labour, the ministry designates the priority works in five regions and states, taking account of education, employment, family conditions, poverty of children. The ministry is implementing the projects in cooperation with the working committee and major partners.
The nine-point decision was made at the first coordination meeting of National Committee on Myanmar Child Labour Elimination on 19 February, 2018. All points have been implemented. The 14-point decision was arrived at the second coordination meeting on December 12, in the same year. Twelve points have been implemented and the rest is under implementation.
One of the two points is to coordinate the budget expenditures necessary for the projects for 2019-2020 fiscal year, by the union ministry, Nay Pyi Taw Council Area and region and state governments.
According to the ILO survey, 218 million children aged between five and 17 are in employment worldwide. Among them, 152 million are victims of child labour, Almost half of them, 73 million, work in hazardous child labour. In absolute terms, almost half of child labour (72.1 million) is to be found in Africa; 62.1 million in the Asia and the Pacific; 10.7 million in the Americas; 1.2 million in the Arab States and 5.5 million in Europe and Central Asia.
According to the UNICEF, there are more than one million unregistered children in Myanmar. Children are in danger of being forced into child labour, recruitment by armed organizations, trafficking and forced marriage.
