Child labor protest from DİSK in front of the Ministry of Education

The new academic year has started. DİSK gathered in front of the Ministry of Education on the first day of the opening of schools. The Confederation held a press conference here. DİSK Chairman Arzu Çerkezoğlu read the statement titled "Poverty, MESEMs and Workplace Murders". Çerkezoğlu also shared the "Child Labor Report" they prepared with the public.

The school bell does not ring for hundreds of thousands of children; Çerkezoğlu noted that they went to factories, industrial sites and fields and that they started working while their friends went to class and said, "Child labor is the bleeding wound of our country. It has decreased by only 1.1 points in 13 years. Child labor is not the choice of children, it is the result of poverty. The duty of children is not to be cheap labor for the bosses. Every child has the right to education, to play, to look to the future with confidence." Çerkezoğlu drew attention to the basic facts in the report. One of these was child poverty.

'CHILD EMPLOYMENT INCREASED BY 70 PERCENT'

Speaking about child poverty, Çerkezoğlu said, "We are now talking about the types of poverty. One in every three children in Türkiye is poor. 6 million 708 thousand children live in poverty. 15 out of every hundred children are forced to work. Why does a child have to work? Because life is expensive and labor is cheap in this country." Underlining that schooling for children between the ages of 14-17 has decreased by 8.1 points, Çerkezoğlu said, "Child employment has increased by 70 percent. Beyond the data, the facts we all see are obvious. The number of students registered to MESEM has increased 5.3 times in the last 10 years. This picture is unacceptable. We are not against vocational education, but vocational education is another thing to turn other children into cheap labor force."

'A SCHOOL FULL OF CHILDREN DIE'

Çerkezoğlu stated that "Children are considered workers when they produce, but they are considered students when their rights are in question" and said, "As a labor organization, we ask the Ministry of Education. Is the duty of the state to provide cheap labor to the bosses? Is it to save children from working?"

In the last 9 years, 93 thousand 517 children had work accidents. At least 546 children died while working. A school full of children. These children were supposed to grow up, but they lost their lives while working. We cannot accept these deaths as fate. If a country's children die while working, this order must be destroyed. We must eliminate poverty that sends children into the workplace. Public vocational education should be strengthened. The development of a country cannot be achieved by making children work at an early age. The future of a country cannot be built on child labor. "The solution is to establish a country where children do not have to work," he said.