child labor in tobacco industry (Brazil)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Rights-Brazil: Child Labor Rampant In Tobacco Industry

NewsEdge
Date:2/4/99 By Inter Press Service via NewsEdge

PORTO ALEGRE - Inter Press Service via NewsEdge Corporation

Six-year-old Daniel Lopes Lencine nimbly grasps the yellow leaves of
dried tobacco and in one swift, agile movement, ties them up in a
bigger leaf.

Tying bunches of tobacco here is dubbed "making dolls" by the tobacco
workers, a term that makes it sound almost like play. This is the way
the adults and children of Camaquan, a municipal area in Rio Grande do
Sul, Brazil, cope with the heavy work they have performed since time
immemorial.

Daniel, his two little sisters and his cousin have spent the bulk of
their childhood in this storeroom full of dried leaves, where the smell
of tobacco is almost overwhelming. Nearby, their 36-year-old father,
Manoel Herculano Lencine, rues the day he was born a tobacco worker.

And he has good reason to complain. One day, as he opened a can of
poison to spray on the tobacco plants, the wind blew the gas against
his legs. The scar it left is clearly visible, the surrounding skin has
lost its color and the itching is sometimes unbearable.

"The doctor said it was mycosis, but I told him it was poisoning," said
Lencine, who also suffers from dizziness and frequent headaches. The
children are anemic and have chronic bronchitis, but even so they work
alongside their father.

His son already seems destined to have only half a childhood. He
doesn't go to school, instead spending his time pulling tobacco out of
the stove or " making dolls." He once tied 30 kilograms of tobacco in
one day, to the great pride of his father, who claims he does not force
his son to work.

Daniel rarely plays sports or watches television. He is sometimes
stricken with attacks of vomiting and stomachache, symptoms also
suffered by his sisters, four-year-old Vanessa and two-year-old
Daniela. The girls spend their days in the storeroom watching their
brother bundle tobacco leaves.

"I have no one to leave them with, the land is not mine, I earn a
percentage," said their father.

"If everyone goes and studies, there will be no one left in
agriculture, " said Maria, the children's grandmother, who says she is
proud at having raised 10 children who work with tobacco.

A study by the Employment Ministry Regional Office revealed that many
children and adolescents are removed from classes before the end of the
school year to work in the tobacco industry, sharing the exhausting
workload of their parents.

But now Municipal Councils for Childhood and Adolescence are fighting
back, trying to keep the children in school.

Questionnaires completed by students indicated that the youngsters
worked an average of nearly four and a half hours per day year-round.

The information collected in five municipal areas -- Camaquan,
Candelaria, Rio Pardo, Sao Lourenzo do Sul and Venancio Aires -- all
tobacco producing areas, were presented to the Health Ministry to help
draw up measures to combat child labor. Similar measures have already
been taken in charcoal and sugarcane producing areas in other parts of
Brazil.

Nearly 520,000 under age 18 are working in Rio Grande do Sul, and 32
percent are younger than 14 years old.

Located 124 kilometers from Porto Alegre, the state capital, Camaquan
has 62,000 inhabitants. The children here start working when they are
around seven years old, but work longer days once they turn 14,
something which naturally affects their performance in school.

The children work all week, including Saturdays, especially during the
summer months when the harvests are brought in.

And stopping them working is no easy feat, say technicians from the
Regional Office, as tobacco is the staple crop of the region's farmers.
At present, 71,720 families in this state alone make a living from
tobacco farming.

The average monthly income of these people is around 334.37 reals, or
$278 prior to devaluation of the Brazilian real -- down more than 40
percent since Jan. 13.

Since casual agricultural workers are nearly impossible to find, the
tobacco workers are forced to use their families to help them in these
physically demanding tasks. Each harvest requires 200 days of work per
person per year, nine times as much work as in the production of beans,
for example.

Furthermore, there is a cultural question involved. The parents claim
if the children do not learn how to work from an early age, they will
not want to stay in the countryside.

Employment Ministry staff will return to the region this year to give
presentations on the risks of child labor and the importance of a
formal education. The Statute for the Child and Adolescent bans night
shift and unhealthy working conditions for children under 18.

The problem is that children employed within the family system are not
considered "employees," and the agreement between the tobacco companies
and the farmers is made without formalizing a agricultural or renting
contract.

This makes the work of the Employment Ministry that much harder, as
they cannot prove the law has been broken, said inspector Claudio
Carvalho Menezes, so the public prosecutor's office and the mayorships
must be involved to effectively eliminate the use of child labor.

[Copyright 1999, Inter Press Service]