Cheap hand labor in the chestnuts shacks

More than 3000 boys and girls work illegally and in precarious conditions; this adds to 3.500 adolescents that work in similar conditions and without labor rights in the collection and processing of chestnut. A big quantity of them present (decline )held back in school because of this work, others got sick with malaria or parasitism; but their worst ailment is to be held as cheap hand labor for the working market or the Amazonia north of Bolivia.
The chestnut businessmen know that by hiring an adult for the collection and processing work of this nut they are indirectly hiring other members of the adults’ families: boys, girls and adolescents. This is not a direct payment and the payment is given by product to only one person. And they know that as long as they include child labor, there would be great cost savings for the companies.
According to the Study Center for Labor and agricultural development (CEDLA), Silvia Escóbar, from more or less 25 thousand that develop their activities in the Amazonian north of Bolivia, more than 5000 haven’t reached the age of 14. We are talking about, at least of a 25 % of child and adolescent labor that do this job.
These are some outcomes of the CEDLA’s investigation, with HIVOS and UNICEF, developed in the Gonzalo Moreno, San Lorenzo and Puerto Rico Municipalities of the Pando department, also in Riberalta Municipality in Beni.
Made by the free market
Escóbar, the study responsible, explains that in the stages of collection or harvest of the chestnut activity there is a demand of boys, girls and adolescents also in the processing and benefit. In the firs stage, they identified 17 thousand collectors from which 4.672 are children and adolescents while in the benefit stage there are 1.812 out of 7.350 factory workers, all of them working in the selection and breaking of the chestnut.
According to the investigator, a great part of the chestnut production is destined to the external market, ‘on 2006 they exported 19.700 metric tons of the products with an estimated value of 70 million dollars’, she indicates. With these sales values and the Price that they pay for the working force, they have high levels of profit, in a chain where the workers continue being the poorest of the region and of the country. She says, the employer pays 55bs for a box of 23 kilos of collected chestnut and every family achieves to collect 3 boxes daily; thus, they pay 2,3 bs/kilo of broken chestnut and every family manages to break 20 kilos of chestnut daily.
For the CEDLA investigator, although poverty contributes to the child labor persistence in the harvest and benefit of the chestnut, the imposed culture for the profit is the main responsible: ‘the employers need cheap hand labor, manageable, that don’t organize to improve their conditions of work and allows them to have high levels of profit, through paying low salaries and no benefits granted by the law.’
This work force, formed by boys, girls and adolescents, is presented to the working market with the objective of increasing the poor incomes that adults get. There is no inspection on behalf of the state in connection with child and adolescent labor, nor institutions that look after the integrated exercise of their rights.
The right to access proper health services, education, recreation and a decent life for many, has remained in paper. If we talk about labor rights of the adolescents the sight is even worse, they don’t even count as direct workers in the companies. They fulfill all the obligations of an adult also in their homes. Work in the forest, at the factory and at home: they don’t have time to dream.

Source: BolPress http://www.bolpress.com/art.php?Cod=2008041410