Gov’t, NGOs Discuss Child Labor in Fisheries
Thousands of children are toiling in the country’s fisheries sector, living in conditions that are often hazardous to their health and depriving them of an education, government officials and UN representatives said yesterday at a workshop in Phnom Penh. Seventy-five percent of the 1.5 million working children in Cambodia – which has the highest child labor rate in the region – work in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, according to the most recent survey undertaken by UNICEF, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the World Bank in 2007. According to a preliminary report released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and ILO at the workshop, children working in the fisheries sector are involved in such dangerous tasks as diving to “excessive depths” to bring up nets, unloading catches, repairing nets and cleaning fish. …
