Grade 2 students of Shree Saraswati Secondary School praying at the start of the school day. Credit: Damakant Jayshi

By Damakant Jayshi

KAVRE, Nepal (IPS) – Four years ago, Ramita Bhujel was a bit reluctant to go back her school after a year’s absence. This Grade 4 student of Shree Saraswati Secondary School here had been down with pneumonia, failed to clear her nursery exams and as a consequence stayed at home.

“I was wary of what the teachers would say due to my long absence,” the 10-year old student says.

Ramita remembers one senior student, Sharmila, visiting her and persuading her to go back to the school, located in Kavre in the east of this Himalayan country. “Sharmila didi (elder sister) came to my home after one of the teachers sent her to speak to me,” she recalls.

Ramita would have gone back to school anyway, since her mother was also for it.

But Bharat Kumar Yadav of Khariyani village of Dhanusha district in eastern Nepal would not have been as fortunate as Ramita had it not been for Welcome to School (WTS) initiative of the Nepal government, supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other donors.

According to a study conducted by Dhanusha District Education Office for UNICEF in July 2010, Bharat had to drop out of school in 2004 because his father wanted him to work in the farm.

Although primary education in Nepal is free, Nathuni Yadav asked his son to help in farm work since there were too many mouths to feed in the family. Bharat stayed out of school for two years until he was spotted by a ‘young champion’, a volunteer who promotes girls’ education in areas where girls’ enrolment rate is relatively lower. (Subsequently, young champions started the drive to enrol out-of-school boys as well.)

The trained young volunteers, selected by school management, carry out household surveys to identify out-of-school children, enrol them as part of WTS campaign and keep track of students

who drop out.

After his initial refusal to let his son go back to school, the senior Yadav relented. Now Bharat is a fifth grader at Gyanjyoti National Primary School, bent on continuing his studies at least until the higher secondary level.

In 2004, the UNICEF introduced the WTS initiative in 14 districts in two phases. The first was an enrolment drive focusing on girls and disadvantaged groups and the second was a push to improve teaching and learning environments so that children would remain in and complete

primary school.

The Nepal government then took over the WTS campaign and launched it in all the country’s 75 districts in the next year.

The WTS initiative has already started showing results in students’ enrolment at the primary level. Nepal’s primary school enrolment rose from the usual two percent annually to 11.7 percent annually by 2005, or an additional 473,000 children, of whom 270,000 were girls, government data show. The increase in Grade 1 enrolment was some 21 percent.

“Net enrolment (at primary level) has shown quite a jump from 70 percent in 1996 to 93.7 percent in 2010,” Sumon Tuladhar, education specialist at the UNICEF Kathmandu office, says.

The WTS campaign’s focus follows the communities’ needs. In some places, it is the enrolment of out-of-school children; in some, it is improving the quality of education; and in others, it is creating awareness among parents, community leaders and teachers about the need for education.

But the key focus remains getting out-of-school children in school, especially girls and those from disadvantaged community like Dalits or ethnic Janajatis.

It often remains difficult to convince parents from disadvantaged communities to send their children to school, says the headmaster of Shree Saraswati Secondary School in Kavre, Ramesh Kaji Shrestha. “They are aware they need to send their kids to school, but we still have a lot of ground to cover,” he explains.

The government has introduced a financial incentive programme to get parents to send their children, including girls, to school. This scheme provides scholarship money to all school-going children from these disadvantaged communities and 50 percent of the girls at the primary level

of grades one to five.

But some schools, like the one Shrestha heads, have added their own touches to this programme. It gives uniforms to all the girl students in the primary level every year. “We could not see the disappointment of the girls who did not receive anything,” Shrestha tells IPS.

Despite the headway made by WTS, curbing the dropout of children from school remains a challenge. More than 20 percent of students drop out at the primary level, that is, between Grade 1 and 5, says the Nepal government report of 2009/2010.

UNICEF’s Tuladhar points to a mix reasons for the school dropout rate — lack of child-friendly atmosphere in schools, parents who are mainly interested in the scholarship incentives and less in sending their wards to school, and traditional teaching methods that do little to keep students

interested.

Teachers admit that many vary little from the old ways of instruction, which include lecturing to setting questions and giving answers to meting out corporal punishment.

“Even a few years ago, we taught as we were taught during our days as students,” says Saraswati Sharma, a Grade 3 teacher at Shree Saraswati Secondary School. “Now I prepare lesson plans in a way so as to allow students more activity and creativity. They really enjoy their class work and homework these days.”

The use of a more child-centric approach by many government-run schools as well as new training programmes for teachers have also added spice to many a class.

Shrestha says this approach includes using new seating arrangements in class: students sit face to face around a table, unlike traditional settings where all face the blackboard with their teacher in front of it. “This promotes group learning,” the headmaster  says. “Now a weak student in the group is helped by his or her peers.”

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'The results are amazing,' Nirmala says of using innovative ways of teaching. Credit:Damakant Jayshi

By Damakant Jayshi

KAVRE, Nepal – Nirmala Timilsina does not want to deprive her students of what she missed as a child — the joy of learning and discovering.

“We were very afraid of our teachers,” recalls Timilsina, a Grade 2 teacher Saraswati Secondary School at Badalgaon in Kavre district. “As such we were too timid to ask questions and would nod our head as sign of having understood what our teacher had said.”

But unlike Timilsina in the past, Laxmi Biswakarma, a fifth grader from the disadvantaged Dalit community, feels at home today in a school where most students and teachers are from “upper caste”. “I am not afraid of my teachers,” says the 11-year old. “They are wonderful and very helpful.”

Timilsina says when she started teaching, she used the traditional method of standing in front of the blackboard, facing the students and teaching, an approach that elicited hardly any response from those under her charge.

But an 11-day teacher training programme conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) with the help of district education office opened her eyes to new ways of engaging young minds. “Frankly, I was embarrassed over what I had been doing,” Timilsina recalls.

Her colleague Saraswati Sharma, a Grade 3 teacher, concurs. “The training opened avenues for us,” she adds. “Now my students do almost everything, I just provide an idea.”

For instance, students take turns in teaching their classmates or sharing anecdotes. This, both teachers believe, makes a student not only remember what they are taught but also gives them a sense of responsibility.

Both the Grade 2 and Grade 3 classrooms — as indeed other classrooms — are decorated with posters, charts and drawings. The posters and charts teach the virtues of being on time and cleanliness, lists duties of students, as well as features stories and poems written by them.

Timilsina, who had undergone yet another teacher training programme of two and half months, says she has explored more participatory approaches to teaching.
“I use fruits in a container to teach my students how to add and subtract,” she explains. This was not something she experienced as a primary school student. Even today, a number of government, and private, teachers still teach subjects in traditional “lecture” method.

Timilsina was pleasantly taken aback by the overwhelming response of her students to one of the exercises she had introduced: writing stories in groups after discussion.

“The results are amazing,” the teacher enthuses. The students in each group discuss the topic or idea given by the teacher, then the one with the best spelling capability writes it down and the rest in the group copy it on their exercise books.

Both Sharma and Timilsina say that many schools in the district have started to realise the importance of giving students a freer hand in charting out their course.

Other teachers have a bit of hesitation about the ‘new’ methods though, saying it can present challenges in how to effectively discipline students.

One “drawback of being child-friendly is enforcing discipline among students,” says teacher Upendra Koirala. Because corporal punishment is frowned upon and its use rare, some students take advantage of the “friendly atmosphere” in the school, he adds.

But any shortcomings – perceived or real – far outweigh the benefits that creative, engaged learning venues provide. With a smile, the school headmaster, Ramesh Kaji Shrestha says: “We will stick to the new approach.”

By Stanislaus Jude Chan

A migrant worker at a construction site in Singapore. (credit: Stanislaus Jude Chan/IPS)

SINGAPORE, Feb 12 (IPS)- Instead of spending weekends at shopping malls in this bustling city-state, Rod Luacan and his family now keep themselves busy with activities in church on Sundays.

Unfortunately, this is a story not of spiritual enlightenment, but the plight of migrant workers – and their families – in Singapore as they bear the brunt of the 2009 economic downturn.

“Sometimes we go to the mall,” said the 37-year-old Filipino mechanical engineer, who was retrenched four months ago from his job as a pressure-valve designer in a marine company. “But we spend weekends in church to help cut down on expenses. We do not have an expensive lifestyle.”

Armed with a Bachelor of Science degree from the Mapua Institute of Technology in the Philippines, an institution that is recognised here, Luacan moved to Singapore nine years ago with his wife. They now have two children, the youngest only eight months old.

“I was the youngest in the department, the last one to be hired. And during the retrenchment exercise, I was the first one to be kicked out, not because of the skill but because that’s the rule – last in, first out,” he lamented. “Until now, I’m still looking for a job. It’s been four months, and I’ve only had two interviews in this time. I think companies here give importance to the locals, but it’s the same in my country so I can understand that.”

Local employment here last year grew by 43,000 in spite of the economic recession. Foreign employment, however, fell by 4,200 in the same period. Some 1.05 million foreigners are employed in Singapore, making up more than 35 percent of the working population.

On top of fighting for limited employment opportunities with Singaporeans, skilled labour like Luacan also face intense competition from other migrant workers, some of whom are willing to settle for less than the market value.

“The market is spoilt,” he explained. Some foreigners, from Burma for example, are asking for a salary of 2,000 Singapore dollars (1,400 U.S. dollars) — or some 50 percent less than the salary Rod expects for his qualifications, skills and years of experience. “Maybe that’s a another problem why I still cannot get a job until now. But I’m still hopeful because Singapore is a very systematic country,” Luacan continued.

He belongs to a class known in Singapore as foreign talents – foreigners with professional qualifications and degrees working in the higher spectrum of the economy. Others, classified as foreign workers – the semi-skilled or unskilled workers who work mainly in the manufacturing, construction and domestic services sectors – face even greater challenges.

Thai national Chanarong Jaidee, who works in a shipyard in Singapore, has seen his income halved since the global recession torpedoed the shipping industry last year. Due to a shortage of ship repair jobs, the company Chanarong works for has had to employ a rotation system for manpower resources in order to cut costs and reduce labour inefficiency.

“Last time, I work almost every day. But I only work three to four days a week now. But there is no choice. The boss is very good, instead of asking us to go home, he tries to let us continue working sometimes and earn some money,” he said.

Now earning less than 800 Singapore dollars (565 U.S. dollars) a month, Chanarong struggles to continue to remit the same amount of money to his wife and three children living in Thailand, against the backdrop of the high cost of living in Singapore.

“We were saving for a new house, but that must wait now, until things become better again. My wife is also thinking of going back to work as a seamstress to help with the money. But it is very tiring, very tough for her, also to look after the children at the same time,” Chanarong explained.

With the recession affecting the primary breadwinners in the family, their spouses are stepping up to augment their income.

In the Luacan household, Rod’s wife now works as a part-time caregiver to support the family until he finds a job. “She is a registered nurse, but she is doing part-time work now. She cannot get a permanent job, so that there is no CPF (provident fund) deduction. At the moment, cash is more important than savings,” Luacan explained.

Foreigners who assume permanent resident status in Singapore are required by law to contribute part of their wages, between 5 and 20 percent, to the Central Provident Fund (CPF), the country’s social security savings scheme.

And amid growing dissent among citizens over the influx of foreigners, permanent residents and migrant workers face tougher times ahead. Permanent residents with children will be worse off from next year, because the Ministry of Education announced in January that it would slash subsidies for non-citizens studying in mainstream schools here.

Fees for permanent residents and international students will be increased in two stages over the next two years. School fees that are currently between 174 and 348 Singapore dollars (123 and 246 U.S. dollars) a year for residents will reach between 612 and 1,224 Singapore dollars (433 and 866 U.S. dollars) by 2012, depending on the level of education.

In January too, the Ministry of Health announced that it would be shaving off health subsidies to permanent residents by 10 percentage points to increase the distinction between citizens and foreigners residing here.

The city-state will also seek to cap the proportion of foreigners in the workforce at current levels.

“We cannot increase the number of foreign workers as liberally as we did over the last decade, or else we will run up against real physical and social limits,” said Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, chairing the economic strategies committee formed in May 2009 at the height of Singapore’s recession, in a report released early this month.

Already, the problems are mounting for migrant workers here. Credit Counselling Singapore (CCS), an organisation which provides counselling and helps debtors work out repayment plans, said new citizens and permanent residents are an emerging group struggling with credit card debt.

Many of those who have racked up large credit card debts, said the CCS, are professionals from various countries, including Malaysia, the Philippines and India, who earn 4,000 to 5,000 Singapore dollars a month. They run into debt because they have to support large families back home while having to pay rent and other expenses in Singapore. (END/IPS/AP/LB/DV/IF/SJC/ME/JS/10)

SUVA, Feb 16 (IPS) – Social protection programmes could help alleviate poverty in the Pacific Islands region, but without the help of developed countries, they will not materialise, said an economic expert in this capital of Fiji.

Sunil Kumar, a lecturer in economics at the University of the South Pacific here in Suva, was reacting to calls by a United Nations official for such programmes in order to alleviate the plight of the poor, who are reeling under the impact of the global financial crisis in the region.

He said that the scale of the problem makes it impossible for this impoverished and vulnerable region to pursue poverty alleviation programmes on its own.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark, in her keynote address at the recently concluded ‘Pacific Conference on the Human Face of the Global Economic Crisis’ in Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific Ocean, said the financial crisis, which swept across the globe from 2007 onwards, presented an opportunity to pursue social protection programmes in the Pacific to address the needs of the vulnerable.

“The crisis presents an opportunity either to initiate or to broaden existing social protection programmes,” said Clark, who was New Zealand’s prime minister from 1999 to 2008.

The UNDP Pacific Centre in Suva estimated that at least 6.44 million Pacific Island people are potentially vulnerable to the impacts of a global economic crisis. This comprises individuals less than 15 years of age and people over 60 years old, representing 67 percent percent of the population.

It added that the poverty rate in the 12 Pacific countries has worsened over the last two years as the incomes of the poorest and most vulnerable people declined.

“Measures which could be considered include school-feeding programmes, cash and in-kind transfers to the most vulnerable, and cash-for-work programmes,” Clark said.

But while “resources will have to be generated from within the communities,” said Dr Kumar, “funding will also have to come from richer countries, particularly if leaders want to see a better world order in the coming decades.

“Definitely these two groups need some special mechanisms to take care of their problems.”

Dr Kumar, however, echoed Clark’s call for effective and efficient public expenditure, the advancement of gender equality, encouraging business investments and reorienting economies to low-carbon development.

But he added that these were “motherhood statements” and specific action plans were needed. “A lot of funds can be made available if governments stop being wasteful,” he said. “Dollars can be saved and utilised for such programmes. But other sources need to be tapped at the same time.

“We need specifically designed programmes to be put on the table for action. A lot of the people who make motherhood statements scurry away when it comes to making the financial commitments.

“The fact is that countries like Australia and New Zealand will have to fork out more resources in aid of small Pacific Island countries.”

The conference, held Feb. 10-12, heard 17-year old Danielle Willis, a Pacific youth representative, outline some of the difficulties that poor families were facing. She said parents were unemployed, families had started to skip meals, children were being pulled from school and put to work and were left without appropriate care as parents struggled to make ends meet.

“Frustration, tension and violence at home and within communities is increasing,” said Willis.

According to Dr Kumar, Willis had painted an accurate picture of what was happening at the ground level in many Pacific Island counties.

“There are some extreme cases of abject poverty, examples of what we call ‘food poverty’, exploitation, violence, disease and outright human misery.”

Dr Kumar, who is currently writing a research paper titled, ‘The Consequences of Global Economic Crisis on the Small Pacific Island Economies,’ said the economic meltdown has seriously impacted the Pacific Island communities.

This is because despite their smallness and isolation, they are linked to the global economy through trade agreements. The economies of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa also rely heavily on remittances from their people living abroad, he explained.

Dr Kumar added that despite the paucity of data, there were many other bits of evidence showing that poverty had increased.

Clark said that with the exception of countries with mining and hydrocarbon exports, and those who had benefited from increased tourism or pursued economic reforms such as Vanuatu, the global recession had adversely affected the economies of other Pacific Island countries, “mostly because the global recession has eroded their income from exports, tourism, and remittances.”

In Tonga, for example, the value of remittances fell by 14 percent last year, she added.

Dr Kumar also noted that the conference’s focus on women and children was significant and welcome as these two groups are the most vulnerable and in most need of assistance.

“Meeting the needs of women and children, an area of focus for this conference, is especially important,” Clark said during the meeting.

She conceded that the measures she was proposing would not be cost-free but in pushing for them, she said that they could yield results that would go beyond the temporary alleviation of suffering.

“Well designed, they can help make societies more crisis-resilient over the longer term, and contribute to more stable and equitable growth,” she said.

Vanuatu Prime Minister Edward Natapei, in his opening remarks, said the region was faced with difficult choices.

“A good distribution of public resources and in many cases scarce resources is vital if we are to address social development problems in our countries,” he said. “The ability of leaders to promote social cohesion in our societies will depend on how they are able to promote the development of basic needs and capabilities of all their people.”

More than 220 delegates, including government ministers, parliamentarians, development partners, U.N. agencies, youth, women’s groups, private sector representatives and civil society organisations, came together to explore specific policies and actions that countries in the region could pursue to mitigate the effects of the crisis.

The conference specifically focused on protecting the most vulnerable communities in the Pacific against the impact of present and future economic crises.

The conference, held Feb. 10-12, was organised by the Government of Vanuatu, with support from the U.N., Asian Development Bank, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and the University of the South Pacific.

“The problem is that a lot of flares that emerge from such meetings die out fast, even before the planes touch down back at home. So we need to act fast,” Kumar said. (END/IPSAP)

Child activist Seto Mulyadi at a mobile class in a mosque in Bintaro, South Jakarta.

By Kanis Dursin

JAKARTA, Feb 10 (IPS) – Two years after the economic recession forced her out of school, 20-year-old Nurul Kumala is now back in classes – mobile classes, that is.

“I want to improve my life and the lives of my parents,” a teary-eyed Kumala said when asked why she attends classes designed for street children in Bintaro, South Jakarta.

More than 60 students attend the Bintaro Mobile Class, which has vans going to four class sites with text and reading books, equipment for science experiments and other educational materials.

Mobile classes can also be found in Senen in Central Jakarta, Manggarai in South Jakarta, and Bantar Gebang in Bekasi, West Java. Each site has classes twice a week. The Bintaro Mobile Class holds classes every Tuesday and Thursday.

Since 2008, Komnas Anak or the National Commission for Child Protection, in collaboration with Mutiara Indonesia Foundation, has been running mobile classes designed for street children and student dropouts.

“We set up the mobile classes for street children in order for them to attend school whenever, wherever, and with whomever. It’s sort of home schooling for street children,” said Komnas Anak chairman Seto Mulyadi, a noted child’s rights activist.

Half of the students in the Bintaro class are dropouts of elementary, junior high and senior high schools who sell newspapers, bottled water, homemade snacks and cigarettes, or busk on streets to earn a living. The rest come from poor families who can no longer afford to send their children to formal education.

Kumala, the eldest of four siblings, said she and four other senior high school dropouts joined the classes in order to qualify for the national exams in March and possibly enroll at a university later this year.

“The classes are cool. I learn a lot here. The teachers are also very friendly and I can find new friends,” she said.

Kumala dropped out of school in mid-2008, just weeks after she moved up to the third year of a senior high school in South Jakarta. Her father is a daily contract worker, and her mother, a homemaker. Being the eldest child in the family and seeing that her parents were having a hard time coping, she felt obliged to help her parents and younger siblings.

“I did many kinds of jobs. First, I worked as a freelance sales promotion girl at motorcycle exhibitions, then became a public telephone kiosk attendant before moving to an airconditioner shop and many other jobs,” she said. At each job, she earned about 200,000 rupiah (23 U.S. dollars), far below Jakarta’s minimum wage of about 110 dollars per month. Desina Rani, 23, who dropped out of senior high school in West Jakarta in 2005 and opened a cellular phone counter near her house in South Jakarta, is also a Bintaro class student. “My business did not make any profit. I decided to attend the classes in order to have a better future,” said Rani, the sixth of eight siblings.

Poor youngsters suffered the brunt of the 2008-2009 economic crisis, according to Komnas Anak. It says that 2.5 million of 26.3 million children aged between 7 and 15 had no access to the nine-year mandatory education in 2009, while 1.87 million of 12.89 million children aged between 13 and 15 have no access to education at all.

Many dropouts turned up on the streets selling newspapers, cigarettes, bottled water or snacks, or working as buskers, raising the number of street children from 36,000 in 1997 to some 233,000 in 2010, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs.

“The crisis has worsened poverty and violations of children’s rights such as their rights to education and health services,” said Mulyadi.

Komnas Anak received 1,998 complaints of violence against children in 2009, up from 1,736 in 2008. At least 62.7 percent of those involved sexual violence, including sodomy, rape and incest, and the rest were physical and psychological violence.

“Ironically, these cases of violence mostly took place in the family, schools, educational institutions, and children’s social environment,” the commission said in its 2009 year-end report.

At the same time, it recorded 1,258 children committing crimes such as rape, drugs, gambling and assault in the same year. “Almost 90 percent of children committing crimes ended with conviction and imprisonment, and the rest were turned over to the Ministry of Social Affairs or their parents,” the report said.

In 2009, the commission received reports of 836 child trafficking cases, up from 507 the year before.

Mulyadi said the government’s response to the plight of children has been marginal compared to its response to the 1997-1998 financial and economic crisis.

“The government has not done enough to protect the rights of children,” Mulyadi said. He recalled that the 1997-1998 crisis prompted campaigns to protect children’s rights, leading to the promulgation of the child protection law in 2002.

“The fact that street children are lingering around the Ministry of Social Affairs, the governor’s office and presidential office shows that the government pays little attention to problems of children in the country,” he pointed out.

He added that the government seems to view children as sources of problems and not victims of government’s failure to meet their needs. “The rights of children are violated twice, once when their rights are not met, and twice when they are considered as problems, and not victims,” he said.

Harry Hikmat, director of the children social service of the Ministry of Social Affairs, has no doubt that the crisis hit Indonesia’s youngsters hard. “The BPS (Central Statistics Agency) is yet to release the number of neglected children in 2009, but the figure is expected to rise by seven percent from 5.4 million children in 2006,” Hikmat told IPS.

In 2008, the Ministry of Social Affairs introduced the Social Transfer Programme to help children in need of special protection such as victims of exploitation, violence, child trafficking and negligence as well as children in emergency situations.

“Some programmes are aimed at meeting basic needs such as nutrition for children below five years old. For poor children already in schools, we provide them with textbooks, uniforms, shoes, transportation and other needs that improve their accessibility to education,” Hikmat said.

While Indonesia’s anti-poverty programmes have managed to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line, these have failed to reduce the number of neglected children, he explained.

According to BPS, the number of Indonesia’s poor continued to decrease from 37 million in 2007 to 34.9 million in 2008, and to 32 million in 2009. The country’s population stands at 220 million.

“Well-funded anti-poverty programmes are focusing more on income generation and economic growth, and none on human resources such as teaching poor families to spend their increased income on their children’s education,” Hikmat said.

Volunteers and trained teachers from Mulyadi’s Home Schooling Programme teach in mobile classes twice a week, using curriculum drawn from the national education programme.

Otty Wikrama, a volunteer teacher for the Bintaro Mobile Class, said that aside from limited funding, one of the biggest challenges a teacher faces is motivating the children to come to class regularly. “Most street children attending the classes already have their own income and don’t really see the importance of education. But we’re determined to put an end to the chain of ignorance with our limited funds,” Wikrama said.

(*This feature was produced by IPS Asia-Pacific under a series on the impact of the global economic crisis on children and young people, in partnership with UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific.) (END/IPS/AP/ED/DV/KD/LLC/JS/10)

(See accompanying story ‘Poverty Going Down, But More Neglected Kids’ at
http://crisisandchildren.ipsnewsasia.net/2010/02/10/poverty-going-down-but-more-neglected-kids/)

Harry Hikmat

Q: How do you assess the government’s response to the global crisis of 2008?

A: The government has managed to suppress poverty, but the number of neglected children continues to rise. The number of neglected children in 2009, for example, is expected to increase by 7 percent from 2006’s 5.4 million children.

Q: Why do you think so?

A: Well-funded anti-poverty programs are more concerned with augmenting poor people’s income than teaching them how to spend the money wisely when their income does increase. Poor families now often spend their money on materialistic, temporary and consumptive needs and not on human investment like education, nutrition, and health of their children. Poor families have to invest in human resources too. Besides, the budget for neglected and other problematic children is very small, accounting only for 4 percent of the national budget. Our budget is not yet pro-child protection budgeting.

Q: What did your ministry do to ease the impact of the crisis on the country’s poor?

We introduced in 2008 the so-called Social Transfer Programme, a programme targeting children in need of special protection, including victims of exploitation, violence, child trafficking, negligence and those in emergency situations. Some of the programmes are directed at meeting basic needs, nutrition for children below five. For children already in school, we help improve their accessibility to education by providing transportation, uniforms, shoes, textbooks, and many more.

We already have a non-discriminatory approach in dealing with impacts of crises. In the 1997-1998 crisis, we had safety net programmes. Now we have social protection programmes such as rice for poor people programme, health insurance for poor people, and school operation assistance funds. These programmes cover all poor people. So, we already have a social protection system in place.

Through the Social Transfer Programme, the Ministry of Social Affairs is targeting marginalised children who have no ID cards, family cards, and birth certificates, which make it difficult for them to have access to education. We want the ministry of health to give health insurance to street children, even if their parents are not classified as poor.

Q: What are your future programmes?

A: We are striving that our Social Transfer Programme covers street children, neglected children, and children with special learning needs. We also want to expand the programme to go beyond the five provinces where we are operating in: Lampung, Jakarta, West Java, Yogyakarta, and South Sulawesi.

(See accompanying story ‘Mobile Classes A Lifeline to Dropouts’ at http://crisisandchildren.ipsnewsasia.net/2010/02/10/mobile-classes-a-lifeline-to-dropouts/)

BEIJING, Feb 10 (IPS) – Life for China’s 130 million migrant workers has never been easy. In recent years, however, family life for the ‘liudong renkou’ (floating population) was showing signs of improving – until the financial crisis.

Migrant workers face low wages, poor working conditions, and in most cases, long periods of separation from their children, who stay at home with relatives, friends or by themselves. Government estimates put the number of “left-behind” children at 58 million, accounting for 30 percent of all rural children.

But from 2003 onwards, when the government allowed migrant workers to move more freely to urban centres, a growing number of migrants has been taking their children with them to the cities in which they worked. In urban areas, children faced new and different problems – namely a lack of government-provided social services – but remained with parents during developmental years.

The financial crisis, at least temporarily, reversed this trend, sending children flooding back to rural provinces. The crisis also highlighted inequalities in China’s ‘hukou’ system – the government registration card that identifies a person to a certain area where they are entitled to basic services – that continues to burden migrant children, whether at home or in cities.

Some 30 million Chinese migrant workers lost their jobs at the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis that affected many export-reliant Asian economies, and many more were forced to accept lower wages and fewer benefits. During last year’s Chinese New Year, about 20 million workers went back to their home provinces and did not return to work. In northern Anhui province alone, 6.2 million people went home and stayed during Chinese New Year.

Scores of other migrant parents who remained in the cities for work were forced to send their children back to their home provinces, greatly increasing the demand on social services. Local governments have been unable to cope. In some places, class sizes have doubled to over 100 children and government provisions have worsened, according to a report by ‘China Labour Bulletin’.

Back at home, many children are left with an inadequate support network.

“Having people who care and are able to support you in times of trouble or challenges is very important,” says Judy Shen, founder and director of CAI, a non-profit project by the U.S.-based Promise Foundation that runs character development and life skills programmes for migrant children in Beijing and Shanghai. “When you’re left behind, if you’re lucky you have family members who are concerned and loving, but there are some children who are not in that situation. Some children are left alone. They grow up much faster.”

Today, migrant workers are increasingly hesitant to bring children to urban centres, where the effects of the financial crisis still linger, says Zheng Fengtian, a professor in the department of agriculture and rural development at Renmin University of China.

“If they decide to go back (to work in urban areas), many of them would not take the risk of taking their families with them. They may not earn as much as they did before the crisis, and that’s if they can find a job at all,” he says.

Meanwhile, migrant workers who decided to stay in the cities with their children encountered a new set of problems. Out of work, migrant families were no longer eligible for many social services, including free public education. Many children were put back in for-profit schools that target migrant children, but many of these are built on abandoned land on city outskirts and in deserted factories.

Not only are children in migrant schools put at an educational disadvantage, but they are at risk of exploitation and abuse. In January, a toddler died in a fire at an unlicensed kindergarten and a school headmaster was arrested for breaking a child’s arm.

The financial crisis and its aftermath highlighted one of the central challenges to China’s ‘hukou’ system: How to provide services to migrant workers outside of the region in which they are registered.

Today, 45 percent of the Chinese population lives in urban centres, but 17 percent do not have local registration cards. Some cities provide basic old-age insurance and health care, but many migrants receive no services whatsoever, according to Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology.

In recent years, some changes have been made to address the challenges faced by migrant families. The central government has mandated that any migrant worker with a stable job can receive social security, and those able to obtain resident permits can rent low-income housing, join local health care plans and receive subsistence allowances and unemployment benefits.

In 2006, the government began allowing migrant children to attend public schools and city governments started taking control of private migrant schools. The Shanghai education commission has said that it will enroll all migrant children in public or government subsidised schools by this year.

In practice, however, many children are not enrolled in public school and indeed many public schools do not welcome them, Zheng says.

According to ‘China Labour Bulletin’, the central government’s commitment to helping migrant children remains suspect.

In December 2008, the government issued a raft of policies to help migrant workers, but few provisions to aid their children. The government initiatives saddled rural governments with the main responsibility for extending services to migrant families, while urban governments continue to provide services for permanent residents and a small number of skilled migrants.

Another problem involves the ‘gaoka’o, or college entry examination. According the ‘hukou’ system, all students must write the examination in the area where their father is registered, even though the test is not universal.

“It’s an unsurpassable obstacle,” says Matthew Ryder, a Fulbright scholar who has studied the advantages of public schools for migrant children. “Even if they went to elementary, middle and high school in the city, they have to go back to their home city to take the gaokao.”

This means many families who have taken children with them to urban centers will end up sending them back at the end of elementary school, or risk putting them at a serious disadvantage when the time comes to write the entrance exam.

“Most migrant workers came with aspirations to improve their children’s lives, but without college, the chance to improve is small,” Ryder says.

Prof Hu says many changes still need to be made to the ‘hukou system’ to level the playing field for migrant families. Students should be able to take the college entrance exam regardless of where their parents are registered, all employment positions should be open to migrant workers, and a health care system needs to be developed to serve migrant workers outside of their registered area, he says.

But these are big changes, and ones that will not happen overnight.

“We’re talking about a billion-plus people. You have to have some form of identification and it’s a big system to manage,” CAI’s Shen says. “There’s no easy solution.”
(END/IPSAP)

There are more than 250,000 street children in the Philippines. credit: Kara Santos/IPS

MANILA, Feb 5 (IPS) – Since he dropped out of elementary school, 17-year old Cenen, has been making a living for himself driving a borrowed motorised sidecar in the crowded streets of Binondo, a bustling business district in Manila, capital of the Philippines.

The youngest of six kids, Cenen no longer lives with his parents. He has been financially independent for some time. He pays a “boundary” fee every day to the owner of the vehicle, pays for all his meals, and sets aside a portion of his earnings toward his goal of buying a motorcycle of his own.

“So I have money to spend when I really need it,” he reasons when asked why he saves. At the moment he is not thinking of going back to school yet.

His friend JR, also 17, finished only second year of high school. He contributes some of his earnings to his parents while saving the rest.

“I’m saving money to go back to school and so that I have something for the future,” he says.

Both Cenen and JR, who declined to give their full names, are graduates of the non-profit organisation (NGO) Childhope’s financial education programme. It teaches children living on the streets the value of money and encourages them to save, an important safety net in times of hardship, says the NGO.

They are just two of the hundreds of thousands of street children in the South-east Asian country trying to survive the economic crunch.

UNICEF estimates that there are around 250,000 street children in 65 cities around the country. Metro Manila alone has about 85,000 street children. About 70 percent of children most visible on the streets are boys, says Childhope.

Because of their age, children are one of the most vulnerable sectors in society.

They may not know there is an economic crisis going on in the world, but they definitely feel the surge in prices of food and basic goods that they need to survive every day, says Darwin Anolin, coordinator of Childhope’s Financial Education Programme.

“Last year, because of the rise in the prices of basic goods, a lot of the kids had a hard time saving,” shares Anolin, who oversees ten communities around Metro Manila and checks the progress of the kids’ savings.

Studies by the International Labor Organization (ILO) show that women and children are particularly vulnerable to the economic crisis, as women typically make up the bulk of the labour force. They are therefore more likely to be employed in the informal sector with lower earnings and less social protection.

Children in Asia are vulnerable too, as the region is home to the largest number of poor people in the world, with a large proportion employed in the informal sector, according to UNICEF.

For children without families who eke out a living on the streets, often in hazardous working conditions, the situation is even harder.

Many street children stay around Binondo, a bustling part of Manila.

Some are called ‘tak-tak’ kids (short for ‘takbo’ or run), because they weave through traffic to beg or to sell cigarettes, candies, sampaguita leis, and rags to drivers and commuters. Others stay outside churches selling flowers or help commuters park and offer to “watch your car” for loose change. The most common job for children, however, is scavenging.

Their meagre earnings are primarily spent on food, but extra money is sometimes wasted on vices like gambling, drinking alcohol or sniffing glue.

“The (Childhope) programme empowers street children who are earning a living to put their money towards a better purpose. We encourage them to save instead of spending it on vices, so that in the future when they need money for important things like going back to school or if someone in the family falls sick and they need money for medicine, they will have savings to fall back on,” explains Anolin.

The programme works like a bank system, with each child holding a savings account. It specifically targets children living on the streets independently, or with no families to rely on, those who have a source of income on the streets, however minor, and those free from vices or drug abuse.

Originally, Childhope targeted street children within the 14-18 age bracket, but later lowered its scope to include 12-year-olds to accommodate interested younger kids.

At the end of each day, street kids turn over their savings to area-based street educators, who record all the transactions. These educators also provide lessons on topics like basic literacy, child rights and values formation.

To withdraw money, the kids have to submit in writing the amount they need and the reason for the planned withdrawal. Those who can maintain good records or have the highest savings each week are given incentives in the form of clothes or basic supplies.

“The programme is good because our money’s not just lying around where we or anyone else can easily get it. The money is in a safe place,” says Cenen.

For JR, his savings are a measure of his financial independence. He is not obligated to give money to his parents, but does so voluntarily while still keeping something for himself.

“I’m still in control of my own finances. I don’t need to borrow money from my parents if I need to buy something, he says.

Findings from a Citibank Financial Quotient Survey in 2008 showed that less than five percent of Filipino youngsters regularly saved money. The study conducted by Australia-based CxC Consulting further showed that Filipinos had a financial intelligence quotient of only 47.5, less than half the maximum score of 100.

To develop the habit of saving and proper money management among children in public elementary schools, the country’s central bank and Department of Education has launched a financial education programme. Other NGOs like ‘Lingap Pangkabataan’ (Caring for Children) have been operating microfinance and savings programmes for the urban poor communities, including children.

“Most of our clients are vendors and some elementary or high school students studying in public schools. Commercial banks consider them a ‘high-risk’ group,” says Norman Franklin Agustin, branch manager of the NGO’s microfinance programme.

Typical commercial banks deny credit to customers who have an unstable source of income or cannot meet a minimum balance or deposit.

“People in the community have tried to maintain accounts at commercial banks but feel embarrassed to go there; they are denied entry if they’re not properly dressed. They prefer to go to our facility because we accommodate them, no matter what their background is or how much they are going to deposit,” says Agustin.

On the average, clients deposit about 10 pesos (21 U.S. cents) a day into Lingap’s savings programme. In the past year, however, most people’s savings dipped because of the frequent withdrawals for food and school expenses.

Why not just save money at home on their own?

Agustin says that having a facility they can trust makes them feel secure about their savings. Some clients have tried stowing away money in jars. However, sometimes other household members get hold of the money, or they themselves end up spending extra money on betting games like ‘bingo’, a favorite pastime among Filipinos.

Though most of the clients are currently families or students, Lingap is currently assessing mechanisms to allow street children in the area to open their own savings accounts.

For Childhope, teaching street children to save for the rainy days is just the first step. They also help beneficiaries of the financial education programme to help them find a more stable source of income instead of what they are doing on the streets.

Vocational courses in cosmetology, reflexology, waitering/restaurant services, and other small businesses are offered to street children who consistently save to move them away from a hand-to-mouth existence.

Anolin says one former street child who has graduated from the course has been able to set up her own small burger stand business.

“We motivate the kids to see that they have a potential to save and see the purpose of their savings. They start to have this sense of goal-setting in life, where they save their own money so they can have a better future,” says Anolin.

Since starting the programme in 1997, Childhope has helped 90 kids manage their own finances. There are currently 50 active savers who deposit an average of 20 pesos (43 cents) each day.

ILO estimates that the Asia-Pacific region is home to some 120 million children under the age of 15 years who are working. They account for close to 19 percent of the 650 million children between the ages of five and 14 in the region.

(*This feature was produced by IPS Asia-Pacific under a series on the impact of the global economic crisis on children and young people, in partnership with UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific.)

*****
(END/IPS/AP/HD/DV/LB/WF/KS/TBB/10)

SUVA, Jan 6 (IPS) – Shonal Chand, 16, has ditched school to work full time to assist his financially struggling family. He sells pineapples, watermelons and other local seasonal fruits by the roadside six days a week.

Today he runs a stall at Laucala Beach Estate, a busy hub about 12 kilometres from this capital city. Chatting away while expertly skinning and slicing succulent pineapples with a dangerously sharp-looking knife, Chand said he has been doing this work since he was 14.

Before he quit school, he was working only on weekends. Last year his parents gave him permission to start working full time. “I did not like school and I wanted to make money to help my family,” he said, smiling.

Chand’s father, who is a taxi driver, and his mother, a packer at a food-processing factory, did not protest too hard when their son said he wanted to leave school and work. The family was struggling to make ends meet, and the extra income was much needed.

According to Fiji’s 2002/2003 Household Income and Expenditure Survey, an estimated 43 percent of the total population of 850,000 lives in poverty of varying degrees.

Observers believe that the situation of tens of thousands of poor families like Chand’s has become even more desperate since the global economic crisis struck in 2007. Such families are now forced to prematurely pull their children out of school and send them to work.

Fiji’s compulsory education age is 15, which is also the minimum legal age for work. The law also prohibits Fiji children below 18 from working during school hours. But just as in many developing countries with high levels of poverty and low levels of social welfare, child labour laws are either poorly enforced or ignored as strict implementation could lead to the affected family going without food.

Biman Prasad, an economics professor at the University of the South Pacific, said that despite having more than 95 percent of children in school, there are more children living in poverty and more of them engaged in child labour than before.

“The main reason why we see more students not being able to complete primary education is financial difficulties,” said Prasad. “While we have made some economic progress, we are still far from achieving levels of economic growth that can effectively lead to the reduction in poverty.”

More ominous for Fiji is the finding by a non-government organisation, Save the Children Fiji, of increased child prostitution. A 2009 survey of 87 adults and 104 children below the age of 18 in seven sites around Fiji uncovered evidence of more young people engaging in prostitution as a result of the economic hardships brought on by the crisis.

The results of the survey of sex workers commissioned by the International Labour Organisation have yet to be released , but a spokesperson for the international children’s charity said that many of the children interviewed had fallen into prostitution in the last two years as a result of economic hardships.

Statistics on the scale of child labour in Fiji are unavailable, but several recent reports attest to the problem.

The ‘2008 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor – Fiji’ published by the United States Department of Labor indicates that children work in agriculture, including tobacco and sugar farms, the informal sector, in family businesses, and on the streets, selling snacks, shining shoes and delivering goods.

Children are exploited through prostitution, pornography and sex tourism, and they are trafficked within Fiji for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation by Fiji citizens, added the report.

The U.S. State Department’s ‘2008 Fiji Country Report on Human Rights’ says increasing urbanisation has led to more children working as casual labourers, often with no safeguards against abuse or injury.

Economically, Fiji was already on its knees when the financial crisis hit, with the country experiencing its fourth military coup barely a year earlier on December 2006.

The global increase in fuel and food prices that followed only worsened the country’s predicament. As a bulk importer of food and fuel, Fiji is especially vulnerable to the price increases. In 2009, Fiji imported 520 million Fiji dollars (271.70 million U.S. dollars) worth of food. Its fuel bill in the same year came to 757.2 million Fiji dollars (395.64 U.S. dollars).

The country experienced a 6.6 percent decline in growth in 2007 and zero percent growth in 2008. Its economy was forecast to grow by 2.5 percent in 2009.

On Apr. 15 last year, Fiji’s Reserve Bank, in an effort to mitigate the effects of the financial meltdown, devalued the currency by 20 percent. This effort to bolster the vital tourism industry, attract investors and protect foreign reserves led to a further increase in the cost of living.

Again, it was the poor that bore the brunt of the devaluation. Earnings either declined or remained static while the prices of basic food items and the cost of transport shot up.

Under the prevailing economic conditions, Chand’s family is only too happy he is able to bring home as much as 150 Fiji dollars (78.37 U.S. dollars) a week as a full-time fruit vendor.

Several other boys with similar stories to Chand are employed by the latter’s boss. Some, like 16-year-old Kunal Prasad, along with his younger brother and sister, are still in school. But further hardships could force him and his siblings to follow in Chand’s footsteps.

According to the Fiji Wages Council chairman Kevin Barr, the dropout rate from Fiji schools before the onset of the global financial crisis was as high as 66 percent, mainly because of poverty.

Speaking at a regional symposium on “Population and Development in the Pacific Islands” at the University of the South Pacific in Suva in November, Barr said that Fiji’s high literacy rates notwithstanding, only about 49 percent of students who enter primary school made it to secondary schools.

There are concerns that the dropout rate may have worsened since the financial crisis struck. In April last year, Fiji’s education minister Filipe Bole said about 15 percent of children did not survive the full eight years of their primary education, while about 74.9 percent did not complete secondary education. School dropouts often end up in the labour force.

The Foundation of the Education of Needy Children, The Rescue Mission Community Association and the Nourish Fiji Children Project are carrying out separate research on the impact of the global crisis on children and youths while raising funds to support the education of poor children.

Government is also taking measures to tackle what it sees as a looming problem. In addition to providing tuition-free education, it has set aside 10 million Fiji dollars (5.2 million U.S. dollars) in the 2010 national budget for free school bus fares. Also, the education ministry has pledged to provide free textbooks to all students beginning this year, starting with primary schools.

This year about 7.4 million Fiji dollars (3.85 million U.S. dollars) have been allocated for the Family Assistance allowance along with a monthly 30 Fiji dollar (15.60 U.S. dollars)-food voucher programme for poor families. Such assistance is expected to benefit around 20,000 people.

“Those on family assistance (about 21,000 people) are only the tip of the iceberg of poverty,” Barr was quoted as having told the ‘Fiji Times’, He added that 60 percent of the people in full-time employment — numbering around 210,000 – earn wages that put them below the poverty line, and over 40 percent of children in Fiji are malnourished. Furthermore, some 104,000 people in Fiji currently reside in depressed sites.

Even before the global financial meltdown, the country was already struggling with some basic indicators relating to child health and nutrition.

At the regional symposium on population and development, Dr Jimaima Schultz, the manager of Fiji’s National Food and Nutrition Centre, tabled research that showed 40 percent of children between the ages of six months and five years were deficient in iron, Vitamin A and zinc.

Dr Schultz said their research revealed that one in every three Fijian child surveyed was anaemic. So were three out of every five children under two years of age. Additionally, for every 10 children surveyed, at least three were at risk of Vitamin A deficiency. She added that food prices were, in the vast majority of cases, strong determinants of a family’s diet.

Notwithstanding the children’s nutritional needs, Prasad, the economics professor, said Fiji’s future rests on how best the country can meet the educational needs of its children in primary schools.

“The best way to break the vicious cycle of poverty in households is to ensure that children from these households receive at least a complete primary education. The government must ensure that it provides funds for all primary schools in the country so that basic minimum standards with respect to facilities are provided,” he said.

“It is an investment in the country’s future.”
(END/IPSAP)

HEZHOU, China, Dec 29 (IPS) – As more and more rural Chinese bid farewell to their impoverished home villages in their pursuit of a better life in bigger cities, leaving behind their young children in the care of relatives or aging parents seems only a small price to pay, especially in times of financial crisis.

But for some, the price is simply too high.

   When a three-story brick building in Yanghui Village in Hezhou, in south China’s Guangxi Autonomous Region, was gutted by fire in November 2009, the majority of the victims turned out to be children.

   Yang Chunfeng still vividly recalls what happened on that fateful morning. Awakened by the sound of a blast, he rushed out of his house and saw a huge chunk of the building next door had been blown off while flames were raging high. Villagers coming to the rescue were soon carrying out soot-blackened children while others were screaming and running for their lives.

   “All the children being taken out of the building were burned bare, with no hair or clothes left,” recalled Yang, who is in his 50s. An explosion at an illegal firecracker workshop in the building triggered the massive fire.

   Thirteen of the 14 victims, all students of Zhiyang Primary School, were aged 7 and 15. Two of them died of severe burns. All of them either had one or two parents working in cities away from home.

   Yanghui Village is about two hours’ drive from Hezhou City, located east of the picturesque city of Guilin and bordering Hunan and Guangdong provinces. With a population of 3,000, half of them children under 14, the village is home to only 4,000 mu (231 acres) of arable land for tobacco and paddy rice. Per capita annual income from farming is a pitiable 600 yuan (about 85 U.S. dollars), hardly enough to feed a family.

   Unable to make ends meet, villagers choose to work in other cities in Guangxi, including Guilin, Wuzhou and Liuzhou, or the neighbouring Guangdong province, where labor-intensive jobs from export-oriented factories had propped up the local economy.

   According to Yang Youji, the village chief, over 1,000 villagers leave to work in construction, textile or brick-making factories, making an average of 18,000 yuan (2,572 dollars) a year eachùway beyond their farm earnings. They are forced, however, to part with their children, totaling 1,050 within the entire village.

   Statistics indicate that some 130 million farmers left their home villages in 2007 – when the global financial crisis began to join the ranks of migrant workers in cities across China and become the main labour force in construction, manufacturing, textile, processing and tertiary sectors. As a result, over 58 million children were left in their rural homes, where their kin, usually grandparents, looked after them. Children under 14 accounted for more than 40 million of these young people.

   Since the economy took a sweeping downturn, triggered by the collapse of financial giants in the United States, many small factories catering exclusively to foreign markets have gone bankrupt. Well-paid jobs are scarce and reduced earnings could only cover some basic family needs.

   In Dongguan City, Guangdong province, alone, 909 foreign-owned enterprises had to close down in 2007. By mid-2008, revealed the National Development and Reform Commission, 67,000 small and medium-size enterprises had gone bust.

   Some of the children left behind by their parents have had to assume part of the ensuing financial burden by trying to earn their own keep to help defray the costs of their education, including their daily allowances. Working at the firecracker factory helped them achieve this goal. After all, all they needed to do was to insert fuses into the 1,000-plus beehive-like, powder-filled, little tubes coiled up to resemble a big plate.

   Yang Xiaoli, a six-grader from Zhiyang Primary School, felt proud of what she could earn in the firecracker workshop. “For every coil I finished, I got 3 jiao (about 4 U.S. cents),” she said, adding that within two to three hours before school started in the morning, she could insert 3,000 fuses into firecrackers, making around one yuan (14 cents). During school breaks, she could generate about 3 yuan (42 cents) a day. “But if I work too long, my eyes hurt.”

   To her knowledge, many children in her neighbourhood had been doing the same, providing cheap labour and using their earnings to buy snacks and school supplies. The older ones used their money for more personal items. “I heard that some children, maybe due to their adolescence, felt uneasy about asking money from their grandparents for their personal stuff,” explained Chen Xiaojie, the head teacher.

   On hearing that his son, Yang Ke, was hurt in the fire, Yang Qisheng rushed to the hospital. After the blast, his face swollen and his skin blackened, he scurried back home crying.

   “As a parent, who wouldn’t like to bring his children along so he personally could look after them? But my earnings could not afford his school fees and the cost of living in a city, so I had no choice but leave him with my parents,” said Yang, who is separated from his wife. He also provides for the medical needs of his parents by sending them part of his income from Guangdong.

   “I am the only one that the whole family could count on,” he sighed. His son lives in a room next to the house of the grandparents, some 300 metres from the workshop.

   Feng Lan’s nine-year-old daughter was killed on the spot. “I only hope my eldest daughter [also one of the victims] could make it. Otherwise, I don’t know how I could live on,” said Feng, as she awaited news about the condition of her other daughter, who was lying unconscious in a hospital. Days later, she finally received word about her daughter, and it was not what she had hoped to hear.

   Feng and her husband have been working in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, for years, leaving the girls with their grandparents. Today, they are left only with the photos of their daughters, stored in an aunt’s mobile phone.

   Yang Qishao and his brother had no idea that their sister, a six-grader at Zhiyang, had been working. “She bought us shoes, socks, sometimes snacks. We didn’t know where the money came from,” said Yang. “If I had money, I would buy my sister some clothes. Hers had been burned to rags,” said Yang, oblivious to what happened to her sister.

   Most of the guardians, as well as the teachers, said they knew nothing about the children’s money-making activity until the deadly blast.

The city government had allocated one million yuan (140,000 dollars) for the blast victims’ treatment. But given the severity of the injuries, the children will take a long time to recover. Many will carry their burn scars for life. (END/IPS Asia-Pacific)

Also read: Sidebar to this article, Migrants’ Children are Home Alone at: http://crisisandchildren.ipsnewsasia.net/2010/01/11/migrants’

-children-are-home-alone/

(*The authors are with China Features.)