Final article: Need to pay attention to managing minors

(Baonghean)- In the mountainous district of Tan Ky, more than a year ago, authorities discovered 11 children aged 13 to 16 working for a garment company in Binh Duong province. Through this incident, the management, education and protection of the rights of minors therefore need more attention.

Mr. Pham Tien Sy - Head of the Department of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs of Tan Ky district said: In May 2010, he received a report from the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs that 11 minors in the district were working at a garment company in Binh Duong. Immediately after that, with the help of the authorities, 11 children (including 5 females and 6 males), the youngest born in 1997, the oldest born in 1994 in the two communes of Phu Son and Huong Son (including 10 children in Phu Son) were rescued and transferred to the local authorities and their families for management.

According to the investigation of the authorities, these children were taken advantage of by a local acquaintance, then recruited to work since the end of 2009 without going through the local government. It is worth mentioning that when the parents came to pick up their children, many people found out that their children were working in the North.Male, but before that, they had no idea where their children were or what they were doing. Some children even had no family members to claim them. However, according to the children,The children work as tailors in a garment factory, and are not exploited or physically abused. However, they receive a very low monthly salary.

According to Mr. Sy, it is very difficult to manage children who have dropped out of school before reaching adulthood. The reason is that these children are mostly born into families with difficult circumstances, and when they are healthy, they drop out of school to find work. When the general job market in big cities needs a lot, parents do everything they can to send their children to work.

From a few children who went first, after each trip back to their hometown, they brought their friends along. The decision of the children to leave their hometown to work was entirely up to them and their families, and the local authorities, including the village chief, did not know. Only in some cases, when they reached adulthood, before going to work anywhere, did they go to the authorities to complete the paperwork and apply for temporary absence papers.

Therefore, when we asked if there were still children being lured into illegal labor in the district, Mr. Sy just shook his head. Only when the authorities of the labor-using area inspect, detect and notify the locality will they know.

Returning to Phu Son commune, the most remote area of ​​Tan Ky district, in early 2012, the hamlets were gradually losing young men and women, as they flocked to the South to find jobs. Mr. Nguyen Ho Thu - Secretary of the commune Party Committee, said: Since the incident of 10 children in the commune being taken to work illegally, the Party Committee and local authorities have regularly organized propaganda about the Labor Law to the people, and at the same time, mobilized people to report to the authorities if they discovered strangers entering the area to recruit workers. Phu Son commune has 5,000 people, of which 27% are ethnic minorities.

The whole commune has about 1,000 children of secondary school age, of which about 10% have dropped out of school. The number of children who dropped out of secondary school are mainly from ethnic minority families, difficult and deprived circumstances. Therefore, after dropping out of school, it is natural that these children have to participate in labor to earn extra income for their families. According to Mr. Thu, for the past 2 years, no one has been discovered sneaking into the commune to illegally recruit workers, but there are certainly still cases of minors working for companies or individuals.

According to Mr. Lang Van Loi, Secretary of the Party Cell of Quyet Thang Hamlet, when the commune issued a policy to compile information about what and where their children were working in the country, very few families reported it. Since the end of Tet, many children in the hamlet have gone to work far away. However, the hamlet cannot know the exact number because they did not report their departure to the local authorities. Therefore, this is a loophole that people take advantage of to recruit illegal workers.

Not only Tan Ky district but also other localities, especially mountainous districts, the situation of minors dropping out of school to look for work is very common. It is thought that, in order to manage children so that their labor is not abused by individuals, localities need to have specific solutions to both promote propaganda work and mobilize children to participate in vocational training to have stable jobs.

Nguyen Hoang