Child labor is when children are forced to work for little pay. The children work to support their families and are deprived of an education. Children are hired over adults because they can work for less money and are easier to manage and control. The children sometimes work long hours in unsafe, dangerous conditions. Children should not be forced to work in these horrible conditions.
Most of the time, these children are forced to do the dangerous or hard jobs that the owners just don’t want to do. Another form of child labor is when the child is when the childrens’ parents send them to work for other families as domestic servants. These children are known as Restaveks. They are usually loaned to the other families to pay a debt or their parents just can’t afford to support the child. They usually do dishes, laundry, fetch water, cleaning and other domestic chores. Restaveks are poor, hungry, over worked, displaced , and have very little education. About 225,000 children are living as indentured servants. The children are supposed to receive food, clothing, medicine and housing for their work, but many are starved and beaten by their caretakers. Getting cocoa beans is very dangerous for the children. They have to use machetes to cut the beans and are around dangerous pesticides.
In the story we read , Iqbal was a Restavek for many years. After working 12 hours days at a carpet factory so that his parents could pay off a debt, he tried to break out many times to escape the poor conditions. He was very weak from being starved and beaten and would have huge cuts and blood on his fingers from trying to free himself. He was so brave to keep trying to escape and one day it