Child labour in the Puruni Backdam
A little boy is down in a mining pit working feverishly among adult men who are puffing their cigarettes and chatting among themselves, their conversations punctuated with profanities. The child, no more than eight years old, even contributed to the stories told.
This was just one of the of the disturbing cases of child labour members of the Guyana Women Miners’ Organisation (GWMO) encountered on a recent four-day trip to the Puruni Backdam.
“In this case it was a boy about seven or eight years old and is in the backdam; he is cursing, he is in the pit, he on the sluice box with the men working… the men smoking and he is right there operating as if he is of their age,” a concerned GWMO President Simona Broomes told the Sunday Stabroek recently upon her return from the area.
According to Broomes when she saw the child there were no adult relatives with him at the time, but she was told his mother is in the backdam and the child would work with persons from the area and does not attend school.
“He is working and operating like if he is a grown man and he is not attending school and that is not right; not only is he being denied an education but he is working under dangerous conditions that can affect him for life,” she said.
This was in the Tiger Creek area and she said she reported the incident it to the mines officer along with other cases of schoolchildren in the back dam.
The GWMO president said the mines officer promised to look for the mother of the child and have her remove him from the area. She noted that her organisation is impotent on some issues which they are unable to effectively address, since even if they find cases of child labour and trafficking in persons, they cannot confront the problem directly themselves.
“I have no legal authority to go to this woman [the mother of the child] so when I see these cases I have to go to the persons who have the authority to talk and to question and to bring about the changes,” Broomes said.
She said there were some other boys a few years older than this particular child also working in the area, and for her it is a matter of grave concern that at times the mines officers would observe such incidents but do nothing. According to Broomes the day before she visited the area the mines officer was at the said location where he was removing illegal vehicles and addressing other unlawful acts, but paid no attention to the children working in the vicinity.
“I am saying, when you go through the areas you target all illegal activities, child labour, trafficking in persons among others…” she charged.
Broomes said she has been a miner for 26 years and a mother of three and she has always recognized that the backdam is no place for kids. She is advocating therefore that parents find babysitters to take care of their young children, or make alternative arrangements if they must be in the backdam.
In addition to the boys, Broomes said there are also many underage girls who are working in the shops in the area.
“Lots of underage girls; I have seen them with my own eyes on this trip working in the shops but I have no authority to approach them and tell them that they can’t be there or ask the shop owner for their ID cards or anything,” she noted.
Broomes said as an organisation they have managed to bring cases to the fore, but she said the time is now for all to come together and “really tackle this situation in a way where we can start eliminating [the problem] and start sensitizing persons.”
And it is not only the dangerous working environment and the long-term effects it might have on the children which worries Broomes, but also the fact that the children are sometimes forced to be involved in illegal activities.
She revealed that while on the trip she met a young man who is now 19 who informed her that he was 16 when he got a job to sell in a shop in the backdam. But when he got there the man who owned the shop gave him drugs to sell and “he had to sell the drugs as if it was sweetie.” The young man said while he was in the backdam one day the police conducted a raid but they did not search him even though at the time he had drugs on his person.
His employer was away at the time and when he returned he was surprised that the child had not been busted, but the young man said he was so shaken by the experience that he told his employer he no longer wanted the job.
“The man just gave him $10,000 and told him he could leave, and since $10,000 could not even pay his passage to leave the area he went and got a job on a dredge and has been working since,” Broomes said.
She said those are the kinds of stories she hears constantly, including a case in Mahdia of a girl who was busted with her employer’s drugs and was left to fend for herself.
Broomes also expressed concern about the seeming lack of information available to persons in the area about HIV and AIDs. She called for more sensitization about the disease and other sexually transmitted diseases.
She explained that the aim of her four-day trip was to obtain first-hand information about what was happening on the ground, since she had received many calls from the area from concerned persons. Many women in the area also signed on to the organisation and she managed to set up a good network within the area.
“So now we have a daily feedback of the activities that is taking place in these areas which I think is [very important].”
Broomes has plans to engage the Ministry of Human Services & Social Security and hopes to have more posters on trafficking in persons to put up in areas that they plan to visit.
“We know as an organisation we cannot change everything, we are not Jesus, but at least we can start and help, and it is happening already, we are seeing some changes…” she said confidently.
Another concern for Broomes was the roads in the backdam which she said are in a bad state. Most of the mining is taking place in “shallow land,” she explained, meaning that the miners have not dug very deep and as such the danger of the land caving in is minimal.
She said during the trips the organisation not only targeted women but also men, and they attempted to sensitize them to safety regulations.
“[These trips] confirms that we need to have more involvement…and I would discuss this strongly with the Minister [of Natural Resources & Environment Robert Persaud] to be more involved in these trips…” Broomes said. (Persaud is the minister responsible for mines)
She is also calling for the police to be part of the trips as well as a mines officer which would result in issues being addressed on the spot.
“It would mean that we don’t have to keep repeating an area and just coming out and publishing a report, but to start to make some changes in the field which is necessary,” Broomes noted.
‘Sickening’
Meanwhile, in Bartica, Broomes said underage girls and boys continue to have access to clubs in the mining community. She said that since the police had raided one club in the township and found underage persons it had hired persons to prevent young children from entering which Broomes said she finds commendable.
“But that is the only club that has put systems in place; apart from that I traversed all the bars and clubs by the roads and the amount of underage drinking in Bartica is sickening to see… I think persons in Bartica need to be educated and also about the environment which is really dirty…” Broomes said.
She called for persons with vision to take a leadership role in the area, and she said the recently installed Interim Management Committee (IMC) needed to have a plan on how they could improve conditions.
“The people in Bartica have complained a lot about water – and I have witnessed it because I was there; there is seldom potable water in the community,” Broomes said, adding that the community is without water for days sometimes, and the water is also dirty.
Electricity is another problem in Bartica, which Broomes described as a “fairy light system.”
