Turkey: ISIG – At least 66 child workers lost their lives in the last year
As the newspaper Yeni Demokrasi reports, İSİG Assembly stated that 66 child workers died due to workplace murders in the last year. He stated that 24 children lost their lives while working in the agricultural sector, 17 children in the industrial sector, 13 children in the construction sector and 22 children in the service sector.
We publish some excerpts of the report:
“In the last year, 24 children (20 workers and 4 peasants) died while working in the agricultural sector, 17 children in the industrial sector, 13 children in the construction sector and 12 children in the service sector. When we look at it proportionally, 36 percent of all child labor deaths occurred in agriculture.
There are some reasons why child labor deaths are shifting to cities despite rural poverty continuing. Because rural poverty not only does not end, it continues to deepen. However, the deepening of urban poverty, the reality of child labor has been multiplied by state policies, especially as we see in MESEM, and the Organized Industrial Zone (OIZ) concentrated in all Anatolian cities, have now brought child labor deaths to city centers and peripheries. Since agricultural worker children were completely excluded from social life and surrounded by areas where they both live and work outside the settlement centers, their deaths were rendered “invisible” by the state and capital. However, child workers are now everywhere, in the centers of cities, in shopping malls, on the streets, on construction sites, in industry and in OIZs. A child works in every family or lineage, there is a familiar working child on every street. This reality coming from production makes child labor “visible”; “They are trying to legitimize it” with arguments about education, skilling and training, and the deaths are masked.”
MESEM is the continuation of the ‘Apprenticeship Training Centers’ that existed until the end of 2016. In other words, we can talk about a child labor system that is more integrated and multiplied into the educational system. It was announced that there are approximately 1.5 million students within the scope of MESEM. Approximately 300,000 of these students are children under the age of 18. In other words, child labor is legitimized by the practice of “one day in school and four days at the workplace”.
MEB, which separates the students who have completed secondary school from formal education through MESEM and offers them to the exploitation of the bosses as free labor four days a week (officially), is now opening “craft workshops” in the summer term under the name of “skill development program” that all students from the 7th and 8th grades can participate in. The vocational education age (12-13 years old) is being reduced with the pilot application to be launched in 196 schools in ten cities – Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Erzurum, Konya, Mersin, Rize, Samsun, Sivas and Urfa.
The main reason for the death of these children is drowning. The main problems of these children, who work 10-12 hours a day and in 40° – 50° C heat during the day, are housing, not being able to go to school, not being fed enough and not having access to clean water. Almost half of the children who died in agriculture died due to drowning in a water canal or stream because of temperature shock.
The main result of MESEM implementation is the increase in the number of children working in the industry. The main cause of death of children working in the food, textile, wood, energy and transportation sectors, nine were metal workers, is getting stuck in machinery, by explosions and burning.
Another effect of the MESEM application is the increase in the number of children working in construction. 20 percent of the children who died last year were working in construction. Again, more than half of these children lost their lives by falling from heights, which is the most common cause of death in construction.
Parallel to the increase in the number of children working as assistants or motorcycle couriers in long-distance transportation, there is also an increase in deaths due to traffic accidents.
İSİG Assembly listed its demands:
1- Child labor must be banned, and the heaviest penalties should be given to those who employ child labor.
2- Education should be completely free and the curriculum should be renewed in the light of reason and science. One meal should be provided in schools throughout Turkey and the needs of poor children should be met by the state.
3- MESEMs do not serve an education-training function. MESEM children learn the job by working for free and under harsh conditions. In this sense, it is impossible to revise MESEMs. MESEMs should be closed and vocational education should be restructured.
4- Programs that are tried to be implemented under the name of skill development programs should be canceled. The spread of labor policies under the name of vocational training to those under the age of 15 must be prevented immediately.
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