DOZENS of children were found working in an electronics factory in Longgang district in a child labor scandal.
At least 40 children aged from 12 to 14 and all from the remote county of Mianning in Sichuan Province, had been employed for three months at the Megatrend Electronics factory. They worked 13 hours a day for about 5 yuan (US$0.76) an hour.
Faced with a shortage of labor in the Pearl River Delta, the factory, which makes Bluetooth adapters, recruited the children through a labor agency. It said all the children had forged identity cards showing they were 16 or older. The factory paid them 7.10 yuan an hour, with the agency taking 2.10 yuan an hour as commission.
A Longgang district labor authority official said 40 children were rescued and would soon be returned to their hometowns. But she would not say whether any officials or the factory would be punished.
The factory was still operating yesterday, with management saying they had double checked workers ID cards to make sure the remaining 350 workers were at least 16.
The case was discovered Wednesday night when police found four adults on a street with about 20 children. Police thought it was a case of child abduction but later found the children were employed at the factory.
Many of the children have refused to leave Shenzhen, saying they were looking forward to working in new jobs, the Southern Metropolis News reported. I can earn more than 1,700 yuan a month and am regarded as a veteran worker in Dongguan, the paper quoted a 15-year-old boy as saying.
In April 2008, Chinese language media revealed that thousands of children from Liangshan County in Sichuan were sold to Guangdong factories over the previous five years. The children were abused and forced to work 12 hours a day, almost every day, under slave-like conditions. Most of the children were from ethnic minorities and aged between 9 and 15.
A dealer in child workers was quoted by South China Morning Post as saying that children who were abducted or bought in Sichuan were sold in cities in Guangdong, including Dongguan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Huizhou and Jiangmen.
In 2007, four companies Lekit Stationery, a Taiwan-invested firm in Dongguan, Yue Wing Cheong Light Products, which makes bags and other products in Shenzhen, Eagle Leather Products, based in Hong Kong; and Mainland Headwear were accused of using child labor and labor abuse by the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation.
In June 2007, hundreds of workers, some of them children and others mentally disabled, were found working as slaves in brick kilns in Shanxi and Henan.
(SD-Agencies)
