Child Labor in Chinas Garment Industry - Essay Example

There are some reasons that make children work as laborers. One of them is extreme poverty. Children, therefore, work with the aim of supporting their families. Employers mostly pay children very low wages compared with the jobs they do. Because of desperation, children keep on working irrespective of the exploitation. The children work because they have no alternative sources of income. If they fail to work, their families will miss basic items. The employers, on the other hand, find cheap sources of labor for children.

Employers are always associated with maximizing profits and minimizing expenditure. The desperate children, therefore, become the easiest target to be exploited. In China’s garment industry, children find employment. Most of the child laborers have contributed significantly to the growth of the Chinese economy. The Chinese government is aware of these exploitations. The authorities, however, do not allow access or the collection of statistics of laborers. International organizations such as UNICEF, therefore, do not have relevant and accurate data on child labor (ILO, 2014).

The second reason children work as laborers is schooling problems. In most remote rural areas, children do not have access to schools. The schools are always too far for children to attend on a daily basis. In other places where there are schools, very low-quality education is offered. The schools have overcrowded classrooms, inadequate sanitation, and poorly-trained teachers. Parents, therefore, do not find sufficient reasons to send their children to school. Instead, they send them to work in factories or plantations where they can earn income and learn basic skills.

Some schools in China face these challenges. In China, the initiation of the Open Door policy led to the implementation of a nine-year compulsory elementary education. Although the plan has partly succeeded in reducing child labor in the country, it still faces some challenges of dropouts. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has estimated that the highest numbers of these dropouts are children between the ages of 12 to 16.