Ministry handled 166 cases of child labour in Q1 2023

AMMAN —   Teams affiliated with the Ministry of Labour have handled 166 cases of child labour during the first three months of this year, according to Haifa Darwish, head of the Children's Employment Reduction department at the Ministry of Labour.

"From the beginning of the year until last March, there were 4,800 inspection tours from the ministry's teams regarding child labour," Darwish said in a press statement.

As a result, 166 cases of child labour were uncovered, according to Darwish, who reported that 67 violations and 57 warnings against employers were issued.

“All local, regional and international studies indicate that the greater the poverty, the greater the child labour. 

The more the school environment becomes unfriendly to children, the more child labour also increases,”Ahmad Awad, the founder and director of the Phenix Centre for Economic and Informatics Studies, told The Jordan Times on Thursday.

The solution to child labour lies in improving people's living conditions by lowering unemployment rates, Awad said.

The last statistics from 2016, carried out by the International Labour Organisation in cooperation with the Ministry of Labour and the Department of General Statistics, saw that 70,000 children are experiencing conditions that meet the specifications of child labour, according to Awad.

He added when child labour exists in large numbers, it indicates that economic policies, as well as wage and social protection policies, are weak.