Abstract:
Marine and brackish water fishing community in the West coast of Sri Lanka is
within the periphery of major metropolitan areas, hence subjected to outside
market driven factors. By the technology used in fishing and the involvement in
other income generating activities, different social strata could be observed in this
community. Based on the hypothesis that child labour is high, particularly in the
families of low level social strata, the present study was conducted with five
objectives; 1) to identify the nature and prevalence of child work, 2) to examine
the association of child work with socio economic factors, 3) to investigate the
effects of child work on the educational performance of children, 4) to develop
simple models to identify child workers and, 5) to propose appropriate strategies
to overcome serious forms of child work, if any.
School children in the fisheries community in Negombo educational zone were
the target group and three schools attended by the poorest sector of the
community were selected for the study. Data was collected using semi structured
interviews with key informants, questionnaire based survey of children,
assessment on children's performance in year end test and statistical analyses.
The presence of child work in the sample was as high as 58%. Working over 10
hours per week had a serious effect on educational performance of the child and
hence was categorized as 'severe form of child work'; and it comprised the 17%
of children. Socio economic and cultural factors associated with child work were
identified and two logistic models were developed to identify working children
and, severe form of child work with simple indicators. Application of models to
identify the severe form of child work, conducting awareness programmes on
long term impacts of child work, establishing the projects to improve child-parent
affinity whilst sustaining the family income are proposed to combat the severe
form of child work.
