Turkmenistan President Promises to End Child Labor on Cotton Fields

Use of child labor on cotton fields will be seriously punished, said Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov at a meeting with the cabinet of ministers. “We should not allow even a single case of child labor exploitation,” Berdymukhammedov was quoted by Turkmenistan.ru as saying.

If school principals send children to work on the fields they would answer before the law. “Children have to study,” Berdymukhammedov emphasized and ordered Prosecutor General and Minister of Education to personally monitor the situation and report on violations.

Despite similar statements by the previous President Saparmurat Niyazov, and the 2005 law that prohibits labor that distracts children from studies and harms health, school and university students have been sent regularly to cotton fields every harvesting season.

In 1991 Turkmenistan was processing nearly 1,4 million tonnes of raw cotton, in 2003 – 450 thousand tonnes of cotton.

Observers say that Turkmen officials have resorted to a crackdown on child labor in order to secure its cotton exports. Absence of adequate governmental response to the calls to end child labor in the neighboring Uzbekistan has resulted in international boycott of textiles produced from Uzbek cotton.

Recently the four biggest groups representing the US retail and clothing industry called on Uzbekistan to end the widespread use of child labor in the harvesting of the country’s cotton crop.

Retailers and clothing companies in the US and the UK – including Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Target and Gap – have already taken measures to exclude Uzbek cotton from their merchandise following repeated reports of Uzbek children picking cotton for minimal payments.

Originally posted and written for: Ferghana.ru

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