Probe finds teenage slavery in Vietnam mines
11:11 p.m. Aug 06, 1997 Eastern

By Adrian Edwards

HANOI, Aug 7 (Reuter) - An investigation into child
labour in northern Vietnam has uncovered evidence
of teenage children working in appalling conditions
in gold mines, a state daily reported on Thursday.

A candid article in the official Vietnam News said
an enquiry by police and local authorities in Bac
Can province, some 150 km (90 miles) north of
Hanoi, had found 82 children being used as cheap
labour in 30 mines.

The newspaper said teenagers aged between 13 and 17
were working in dangerous and filthy conditions,
each hauling as much as four tonnes of rubble out
of the mines every day.

``Many of the children were coughing blood due to
the arduous work, and were locked up at night by
mine owners, who feared that their cheap labour
force would escape,'' the report said.

It said one of the children, 15-year-old Nguyen Van
Nam, had to work as much as 14 hours per day, but
had not been paid for six months and was forced to
forfeit meal breaks if he moved fewer than 270
15-kilogram (33-pound) baskets per day.

Child labour exploitation is a complex problem in
Vietnam. Its extent is difficult to assess because
of a common practise of children helping their
parents by working at home or in the fields.

The government estimates around 29,000 children
below the age of 15 are victims of exploitative
labour.

But a U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) official warned
earlier this week that the figure was deceptive as
most children at work in Vietnam were employed in
the difficult to monitor informal sector.

Rima Salah, of UNICEF's Hanoi office said there was
also evidence that the problem was increasing.

``There is evidence of children exploited in gold
mines, children working as domestic servants at a
very young age or children working up to 14 hours a
day in hazardous conditions for a meagre salary or
no payment,'' she said in a statement.

Vietnam News said the mine owners in Bac Can had
been made to return the children to their families,
but added that ``...many mine owners escaped into
the forest, taking their child-workers with them.''

It said 68 of the children had been reunited with
their parents and gold mine owners made to give
back pay totalling some $1,025.

The case is the second to emerge in recent months.
In June a raid by security forces guards on an
illegal gold mine close to the border with Laos in
central Vietnam resulted in 15 teenage boys being
rescued.

The boys had worked in similar conditions.

A UNICEF official, Damien Personnaz, applauded
Vietnam's normally tightly-controlled domestic
media for having reported both that issue, and the
latest case with candour.

``If this story is really true then this is not
about child labour. This is about slavery,'' he
said on Thursday.