Tanzania Struggles to End Child LaborTanzania
NYALIGONGO, TANZANIA
Three years ago, 14-year-old Julius left his family near the lakeside city of Mwanza, Tanzania, to try his luck mining gold.
Today, Julius is in no hurry to leave, despite having one of the riskiest jobs on a chaotic mine site — handling mercury each day with his bare hands.
"It's good work. I'm paid well," Julius, who wanted to use only his first name, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, wearing an orange T-shirt and skinny jeans coated with red dirt.
Julius, now 17, said he has been working with mercury for three years, but no one had ever told him it was dangerous.
There are more than 4 million child laborers in Tanzania aged between 5 and 17, according to a government survey released last year in conjunction with the International Labor Organization. That's roughly a third of the country's children.
More than 3 million are doing hazardous jobs, including at illegal mines like the one near Nyaligongo in northern Tanzania, where they are exposed to mercury, heavy dust and work long shifts without safety gear.
Many unaware of laws
The Tanzanian government is aware of the problem but has struggled to keep children out of small, unlicensed mines. Its laws do not allow children under 14 to work, and hazardous work is not permitted for children over 14. Tanzania has signed all major international conventions on child labor and introduced its own laws to prevent the worst child labor.
But not everyone knows of the child labor laws, including families and local officials.
Government workers tasked with enforcing the laws lack the staff and funds for inspections, let alone prosecutions.
"In Tanzania we have a good law and strategy to eliminate all kinds of child labor, but the problem here is who is going to implement this at the local level," said Gerald Ng'ong'a, executive director of Rafiki Social Development Organization (SDO), an NGO that works on child labor in northern Tanzania.
"Local officials don't have enough information about the law and how to protect children."
Lure of gold
The problem is especially hard to tackle in the informal sector, said Emma Gordon, senior Africa analyst at global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, which ranks Tanzania as the 55th-most "at risk" country in its 2017 Child Labor Index, due to be published Wednesday.
"The government's focus is very much centered around large industrial projects, particularly foreign-owned businesses that would be able to pay fines if violations were discovered," Gordon wrote in an email to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.n Lake Victoria's gold belt, where gold has been extracted since the 1890s, licensed and unlicensed small mines operate with major mining firms close by. The scrappy "artisanal" mines provide a crucial source of income to people outside Tanzania's cities, but like the mining site at Nyaligongo, many operate without government licences.
The majority of children working in gold mines are employed by individuals running these unlicensed mines, observers say. They are among the worst exploited of the mines' workers, typically earning the equivalent of about 1 euro ($1) a day.
"Pit owners employ children because they're cheap labor," said Ng'ong'a.
Legal or not, the lure of the mines — and the harsh poverty of the farming communities around them — keep children coming.
Brothers Petromos and Mayalamos, 12 and 16, left their village outside Mwanza because they heard there was good money to be made at this mine.
"The work is difficult," said Mayalamos. "But I can only leave this place once I've earned enough."
Nyaligongo village relies on gold to survive.
On the village's main street, cramped shops sell vegetables, SIM cards and lunch to off-duty miners. Middlemen purchase gold from miners to sell in the closest town, Kahama, where it is resold in bigger cities like Mwanza and Dar es Salaam.
Students leave to work
More than 8,000 people live in Nyaligongo, says Faustine Masasila, the village's secretary and a mine site owner, and more are still arriving.
"There are people here who used to have very miserable lives," Masasila said, walking through the buzzing market. "If you work hard, you are guaranteed prosperity."
n Lake Victoria's gold belt, where gold has been extracted since the 1890s, licensed and unlicensed small mines operate with major mining firms close by. The scrappy "artisanal" mines provide a crucial source of income to people outside Tanzania's cities, but like the mining site at Nyaligongo, many operate without government licences.
The majority of children working in gold mines are employed by individuals running these unlicensed mines, observers say. They are among the worst exploited of the mines' workers, typically earning the equivalent of about 1 euro ($1) a day.
"Pit owners employ children because they're cheap labor," said Ng'ong'a.
Legal or not, the lure of the mines — and the harsh poverty of the farming communities around them — keep children coming.
Brothers Petromos and Mayalamos, 12 and 16, left their village outside Mwanza because they heard there was good money to be made at this mine.
"The work is difficult," said Mayalamos. "But I can only leave this place once I've earned enough."
Nyaligongo village relies on gold to survive.
On the village's main street, cramped shops sell vegetables, SIM cards and lunch to off-duty miners. Middlemen purchase gold from miners to sell in the closest town, Kahama, where it is resold in bigger cities like Mwanza and Dar es Salaam.
