Child laborers are an everyday sight in Peru

Child laborers are an everyday sight in Peru, from the rural mountains where children tend cattle, to the boys who clean windshields in the most modern parts of Lima. Victor Garcia, a three-year-old Peruvian, lifts a brick in an informal brickyard in a shantytown in Lima, June 15, 2002.

Peru struggles with child labor

HUACHIPA, Peru (Reuters) - Peruvian brickmaker Ernesto has perfected a strategy for stacking heavy, dull red bricks in this open-air brickworks outside Lima, Peru. But he can't share the tricks of his trade because he is only 3 years old and can barely talk.

"I'm tired," the small, dark-haired boy said. Nevertheless, he and his 7-year-old sister Maribel begin their task: turning over sand and water bricks with their feet so they dry in the sun in the informal brickyard.

Some 500 other children work near Ernesto and Maribel at the brickworks, where they breathe thick dust all day as they labor to help their poor families.

Ernesto, Maribel and the others are among the hundreds of thousands of child laborers in this Andean nation.

According to the government's National Statistics Institute, about 1.83 million children between ages 6 and 17 work in Peru -- more than one-quarter of the country's children and teenagers.

Their jobs range from collecting trash and making bricks to selling sweets at stoplights and helping their parents dig for gold in small, informal mines.

"It's a worrying outlook. (These children) are a big part of tomorrow's workforce and they aren't getting any schooling," said Eduardo Araujo, head of regional programs for the United Nations International Labor Organization. And the institute's figures on child labor in Peru would be more dramatic if children under 6 were included in the study, Araujo said.

"Child labor is linked to the parents' employment situation and reflects their survival strategies," Araujo said.

Child laborers are an everyday sight in Peru -- from the rural mountains where children tend cattle to the streets of urban Lima where boys clean windshields.

Even Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, the U.S. trained-economist who rose from poverty to be elected last year, worked as a young shoeshine boy.

Many Peruvians -- 55 percent of whom live on $1.25 or less a day -- looked to Toledo to improve their lot and create jobs. He has promised to usher in prosperity for Peru. But as his first anniversary as president approaches on July 28, Toledo's popularity has plummeted to less than 16 percent as people complain of broken promises of more work.

Near Ernesto and his sister, Senon Pedraza relies on his three children -- who work in shifts from dawn to 5 p.m. -- to help him mix sand and water to make the bricks.

The Pedraza family earns 23 soles (about $7.50) for every 1,000 bricks they make. In a week, they can make around 6,000 bricks, which factories will later sell for six times that amount.

Twelve-year-old Julio Pedraza wears a belt to support his midriff when he works, but he does not complain as he lifts loads weighing 44 pounds (20 kg).

"By Saturday, the end of the week, my back hurts. But there isn't much I can do about that," says Julio, who studies half the day and says he would like to learn about computers.

"We haven't been to school for a long time," says his sister, 17-year-old Marlene Pedraza.

According to the International Labor Organization, three out of four child laborers abandon school before they can complete their studies -- a pattern that severely limits their future earning ability and traps them in a "vicious circle of poverty."

Alfredo Robles, director of the nongovernmental Association for the Defense of Life, oversees 100 of the 500 child brickmakers in Huachipa in a program designed to root out child labor.

The program gives the children extra academic help and seeks to boost their self-esteem.

The children "are mistreated because they are poor and uneducated," Robles said. "The key weapon against child labor is schooling. It's very hard for a child who works to attend public school in a normal manner -- desertion rates are very high."

Monica Rodriguez, who directs a national project on child labor and education for the International Labor Organization, said there is a high correlation between countries that spend a big percentage of their gross domestic product on education and countries that have been able to curb child labor.

In 2002, Peru will spend 3 percent of its gross domestic product on education, according to the Education Ministry. Peru's cash-strapped government has ambitious plans to invest in schools, but it has had to slash all spending to keep its budget deficit in check.

"What's needed is sustained education spending, at least 6 percent (of GDP) over six years. A country that doesn't invest in education, that isn't investing in its children, is a country with no future," Rodriguez said.

In a move to eliminate the endemic problem, Peru last year signed two International Labor Organization treaties. One treaty sets the minimum work age at 15 and another prohibits the "worst" forms of child labor, like physically dangerous work or prostitution. The U.N. labor organization had no immediate comment on whether the treaties made a difference.

The government's childhood and adolescence plan aims for total eradication of all forms of child labor by 2010.

"This is positive because it sets a legal precedent, but it doesn't guarantee compliance because the tools aren't there. How is the state going to invest in creating jobs for these childrens' parents?" Robles asked, sitting in the bare room where child brickmakers in Huachipa go to school.

"To make this situation better there need to be active policies that help families help their children attend school," Araujo said.

Asked why they send their youngest children out for long and physically demanding days of work, parents in Huachipa echo the same simple response: "We all need to eat."