AMMAN —
Children caught among street beggars this year accounted for 32.8 percent of
4,834 beggars, according to data by the
Ministry of Social Development,
Al-Mamlaka TV reported Sunday to coincide with a UN week of action marking the
World Day Against Child Labor.
اضافة اعلان
Another local media outlet, AmmanNet, said
meanwhile that the Jordan Labor Watch anticipated an increase in child labor
due to the persistence of factors that cause children to drop out of school and
join the labor market.
At least 4,834 beggars were nabbed this
year, including 1,586 children, Al-Mamlaka said quoting a statement by the
ministry’s assistant secretary-general for Development and Welfare Affairs,
Mahmoud Al-Jbour on Saturday.
All through 2021, Jabour pointed out, 5,800
children were arrested for beggary out of 13,558 beggars. He said that an
amendment to the penal code, enacted last month, strengthened punishments for
children’s beggary, an implicit reference to what could be interpreted as a
slight reduction in the number of beggars.
The
Jordan Labor Watch of the Phoenix
Economic and Informatics Studies said in a statement marking the World Day
Against Child Labor that the occasion is an opportunity to shed light on the
issue of child labor around the world, including Jordan.
The statement said the objectives of a
sustainable development plan called for “immediate measures” to ensure that the
worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use as soldiers, are
prohibited and eradicated and that all forms of child labor end by the year
2025.
Jordan’s legislative system prohibits child
labor and is in line with relevant international standards, according to the statement.
It said that although the government
promulgated months ago the first draft of the Children’s Rights Act, and said
it was developing a strategy to combat child labor, “various key indicators
were driving the expectation that child labor would increase in the upcoming
years”.
The statement asserted if there were no
qualitative improvements in the government’s basic education environment to
encourage children to stay in school and reduce school dropout, which is the
primary driver of child labor, the current efforts will be ineffective.
The Labor Watch statement said that the good
intentions to reduce child labor, expressed in legislating laws, developing
strategies and inspection procedures, and rehabilitating children workers back
to school, are “not merely sufficient to reduce child labor, unless accompanied
by significant improvements in citizens’ living standards, social protection
and the development of public education.”
The UN declared the
World Day Against Child Labor under the theme of “Universal Social Protection to End Child Labor”. The
event is marked on June 12.
The world body said on its website that
“while significant progress has been made in reducing child labor over the past
two decades, progress has slowed over time and even stopped during the period
2016-2020.”
According to the UN, 160 million children
today are still involved in child labor, some as young as five years.
The
UN pointed out that government social protection
systems are necessary to combat poverty and vulnerability, and prevent child
labor, which is a human right and an effective political tool to prevent
families from resorting to child labor in times of crisis.
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