Nabila works 10 hours or extra a day, doing the heavy, soiled labour of packing mud into moulds and hauling wheelbarrows stuffed with bricks. At 12 years previous, she has been working in brick factories for half her life now, and she or he might be the oldest of all her co-workers.
Already excessive, the variety of youngsters put to work in Afghanistan is rising, fuelled by the collapse of the economic system after the Taliban took over the nation and the world minimize off monetary help simply greater than a yr in the past.
A current survey by Save the Youngsters estimated that half of Afghanistan’s households have put youngsters to work to maintain meals on the desk as livelihoods crumbled.
Nowhere is it clearer than within the many brick factories on the freeway north of the capital, Kabul. Situations within the furnaces are powerful even for adults. However in virtually all of them, youngsters as younger as 4 or 5 labour alongside their households from early morning till darkish.
Youngsters do each step of the brickmaking course of. They haul canisters of water, and carry the wood brick moulds stuffed with mud to place within the solar to dry. They load and push wheelbarrows stuffed with dried bricks to the kiln for firing, then push again wheelbarrows stuffed with fired bricks.
Only some have been to highschool. Nabila, the 12-year-old, has been working in brick factories since she was 5 – 6. Like many different brick employees, her household works a part of the yr at a kiln close to Kabul, the opposite half at one exterior Jalalabad, close to the Pakistani border.
“We are able to’t take into consideration anything however work,” she mentioned.
Mohabbat, a nine-year-old boy, stopped for a second with a pained expression as he carried a load of charcoal. “My again hurts,” he mentioned.
Requested what he wished for, he first requested: “What’s a want?”
As soon as it was defined, he was quiet for a second, pondering. “I want to go to highschool and eat good meals,” he mentioned, then added: “I want to work effectively in order that we are able to have a home.”
The panorama across the factories is bleak and barren, with the kilns’ smokestacks pumping out black, sooty smoke. Households reside in dilapidated mud homes subsequent to furnaces, every with a nook the place they make their bricks. For many, a day’s meal is bread soaked in tea.
Rahim has three youngsters working with him at a brick kiln, starting from 5 to 12 years. He mentioned he had no selection. “There’s no different means,” he mentioned. “How can they examine once we don’t have bread to eat? Survival is extra necessary.”
Employees get the equal of $4 for each 1,000 bricks they make. One grownup working alone can’t do that quantity in a day, but when the kids assist, they will make 1,500 bricks a day, employees mentioned.
In accordance with surveys by Save the Youngsters, the proportion of households saying that they had a baby working exterior the house grew from 18 p.c to 22 p.c from December to June. That might recommend multiple million youngsters nationwide had been working. One other 22 p.c of the kids mentioned they had been requested to work on the household enterprise or farm.
In June, 77 p.c of the surveyed households reported that they had misplaced half their earnings or extra in contrast with a yr in the past, up from 61 p.c in December.
At one of many kilns, it begins to rain. At first, the kids had been cheerful, pondering it will be a refreshing drizzle within the warmth. Then the wind kicked up. A blast of mud hit them, coating their faces. The air turned yellow with mud. Among the youngsters couldn’t open their eyes, however they saved working. The rain opened up right into a downpour.
The kids had been soaked. One boy had water and dust pouring off of him, however just like the others, he mentioned he couldn’t take shelter with out ending his work.
“We’re used to it,” he mentioned. Then he instructed one other boy, “Hurry up, let’s end it.”