Band 5+: In many countries children are engaged in some kind of paid work. Some people regard this as completely wrong, while others consider it as valuable work experience, important for learning and taking responsibility. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

There are two different schools of thought about whether child labour is a good practice or not. I genuinely believe, this is one of the worst malpractices since children suffer in numerous ways due to this.

First and foremost, piecework compels children to give up education. Generally, children of poverty stricken countries like Somalia, Nigeria, Ghana, Togo get involved into piecework. Because, if they do not work outside their family would not survive. Earning money is of utmost importance to them. When they start earning money and when they realize the importance of earning money at one point of time they give up education. They grow up being uneducated. As a result, a country loses hard potential educated workforce. For example, most of the African nations live under the poverty line. 60% to 70% of their children start working at a very young age and they never go to school. Consequently, most of the African nations lack educated workers, and that is the reason why these countries are still suffering tremendously over the last 2-3 decades.

Moreover, early involvement into job, makes children suffer both physically and mentally. As most of these jobs are heavyweight jobs, and they start at a very delicate age (early age). So when they do heavyweight jobs they suffer from many physical complications, they suffer from malnutrition mostly. Again, they suffer from backbone issue specially children, who work in chemical factories. So, sometimes due to the chemical reactions they suffer from different types of skin diseases including skin cancer. They also suffer from kidney failure different other complicated diseases in course of time. When they see children of their ages are enjoying life, they suffer from inferiority. So they suffer both physically and mentally. For example, in African continent more than 40% child workers suffer from many complicated diseases specially malnutrition and many of them dying at times even in the workplace.

Last but not the least, many of time, child labourers grow up as criminals. Children are too young to judge between right or wrong. Sometimes they are engaged into criminal activities by their employers. They get involved into this type of activity unknowingly. They are exploited by their employers. They don’t even know that they are already engaged into criminal activities. Again, sometimes to earn money quicker they deliberately engaged themselves into criminal activities and this way they can hurt a big amount of money. Sometimes they do not even understand the type of crime they do because they are very young. For example, a statistics sense in the whole world more than 60% drug peddlers are children. They are engaged into drug trafficking. They take drugs from one place to another place. So that is why, statistics says today’s child labourers are tomorrow’s potential criminals and a good number of child labour grow up begin criminals.

In view to the aforementioned facts and circumstances, it can be said that child labour is an ultimate curse that dexterous the lives of many children. This is high time the government should adopt immediate measures to bring this practice to a completely holt and take action who forces children for work before right age.