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Tajikistan’s authorities should amend the legislation to create favourable conditions for prevention and elimination of the worst forms of child labour in the country, ILO-IPEC National Consultant Dzhamshed Kuddusov said on June 12 at the presentation of the national action plan on elimination of the worst forms of child labour in Tajikistan for 2012-2020. This event coincided with the World Day Against Child Labour.
Kuddusov noted that Tajikistan’s effective legislation has no definition of child labour and the worst forms of child labour. “As there is no identification, there is no list of dangerous and harmful jobs for persons under 18 years of age. As a result, there are no instruments of influence on those economically interested persons or a group of persons, who are ready to use child labourers and pay them less,” he said.
“Of course, we ratified the ILO Convention Concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment, 1873 (No. 138) and Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, 1999 (No. 182), but we need to integrate these conventions into Tajikistan’s legislation,” Kuddusov said.
It took two years and 20 national experts and officials of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population to develop the national action plan. Around $130,000 was spent for these efforts.
ILO Project Coordinator in Tajikistan Muhayo Khosabekova cited the ILO’s new report Ending Child Labour in Domestic Work, which says an estimated 10.5 million children worldwide – most of them under age – are working as domestic workers in people’s homes, in hazardous and sometimes slavery-like conditions. Six and a half million of these child labourers are aged between five and 14 years-old. More than 71 per cent are girls.
She also noted that Tajikistan has been conducting events devoted to the World Day Against Child Labour since 2005 to draw public attention to the problem.
Source: news.tj
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