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Saving Children from Hazardous Work in Quarries
More than 3 000 of the 20 000 workers in Minya’s limestone quarries are children. Boys as young as 8 years old go up to the desert mountain to earn five dollars per day doing heavy and hazardous work in what has been defined as the most dangerous sector for children to be employed in. The relatively high salary and the need to support their families who survive at or below the poverty level attract children to the quarries despite a great aversion to the work.
Children fear accidents which they see happening on a regular basis, sometimes with deadly outcomes, due to primitive machines and insufficient protective measures. The extremely bad work environment causes damages to children’s health which will deteriorate to the point that they have to stop working when they reach their mid-thirties. Children labor between 12-14 hours per day in the harsh weather conditions of the open desert. Access to water is limited to a few tanks which still contain remnants of the gasoline they used to carry. A small meal of Egyptian beans and taamiyya does not provide sufficient nutrition for children to handle such physical and mental strain. Repeated accidents occur already on the way to work, as the cars arranged to transport children from their villages to the mountain, on roads not controlled by traffic police, are in such bad condition that they could not be used inside cities.
The above circumstances remove the quarry child painfully far away from the world of a child enjoying its full rights to a happy, safe and healthy life, education and protection from exploitation.
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Children working in quarries do not enjoy their full rights
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Support BLACD’s efforts to prevent children from resorting to Quarry Work
The founder of BLACD, Mr. Maher Boshra, was the first director of a civil society organization to care for these children by establishing the Wadi El-Nil Association for the Protection of Quarry Workers in 2000. Interventions have been implemented by the association to improve the health and living circumstances of quarry children and to liberate them from the dangerous work in the quarries.
Activities include raising awareness of children and their families of children’s rights, providing vocational training to children to give them skills to work in unhazardous sectors, offering loans to families of child workers to start small income generating projects in order to prevent their children from seeking work in the quarries, supporting children’s school attendance, distributing games and organizing sport and leisure time activities for children to allow them to enjoy their right to play and rest, as well as providing medical check-ups and medicines to counteract and prevent diseases related to the eyes, throat, lungs and bones.
To view a video clip about Children working in Quarries, please click here.
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Children are involved in various aspects of quarry work including arranging, carrying and loading lime stone bricks as well as grinding bricks into powder and packing limestone powder.
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Your contribution makes a difference
The association has so far reached 800 of the 3000 children working in Minya’s quarries. Starting as of October 2008, BLACD is conducting an online campaign to raise funds to extend services to more quarry children. Your contribution will be used to improve the lives of children by paying for medical check-ups and medicines, educational activities, clothes and games, as well as vocational training for children aged 12-16 in non-hazardous sectors such as carpentry, electricity, refrigeration, and repair of engines and domestic machines. Letters of thank you from children will be sent to all contributors for you to know exactly how your contribution made a difference to a child’s life.
The power of private companies to make a change
Believing in the importance of the participation and contribution of the private sector in creating a better life for all, we especially invite private companies to support our actions to liberate children from work in quarries. BLACD will give special visibility to private company contributors, including displaying company logo online and in banners and other related information material during celebrations and campaigns.
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Recognition of Contribution
Upon receiving the donated amount, BLACD will send a recognition of receipt to the email address provided to us. At the end of the campaign an online publication containing pictures and figures of what we accomplished to do with the help of your donation will be sent to all contributors and interested parties, as well as published on BLACD website. The publication will contain a list of the names and country of all those who made the project work (unless the contributor desires to be anonymous).
If you want more information about the campaign and donations, or want to donate for a different cause, please contact:
Ms. Reham Karam, General Project Manager
blacd@link.net
+2 086 2329575/ 086 2330661
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