Articles

Tobacco's Children

Some children employed as tobacco pickers in Malawi are absorbing nicotine equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day, according to a Plan report

The report ‘Hard work, little pay and long hours’ reveals that child labourers, some as young as five, are suffering severe physical symptoms from absorbing up to 54 milligrams a day of dissolved nicotine through their skin - the equivalent of 50 average cigarettes.

As the tobacco industry continues to shift its production to developing countries, more vulnerable children are being exposed to these hazardous working conditions. It is estimated that over 78,000 children work on tobacco estates across Malawi – some for up to 12 hours a day, for less than 1p an hour and without protective clothing.

Multinational companies buy the majority of Malawi’s burley tobacco. This low-grade, high-nicotine tobacco is often used as a filler in cigarettes across Europe and North America.

Exploitative conditions

During Plan’s research, children also revealed the physical, sexual and emotional abuse they suffer and spoke about the need to work under these exploitative conditions to support themselves, their families and pay school fees.

They reported symptoms of Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS), or nicotine poisoning, including severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.

"Sometimes it feels like you don’t have enough breath, you don’t have enough oxygen," says one child. "You reach a point where you cannot breathe because of the pain in your chest. Then the blood comes when you vomit.”

Enforce existing laws

Plan is now calling upon all responsible parties to live up to their commitments: the government to rigorously enforce existing child labour and protection laws; plantations to provide safer, fairer working conditions for those children forced to work and multinational tobacco companies to scrutinise their suppliers far more closely and strictly adhere to their own corporate responsibility guidelines.

“This research shows that tobacco estates are exploiting and abusing children who have a right to a safe working environment. Plan is calling for better enforcement of child labour laws and harsher punishment for employers who break them,” says Mcdonald Mumba, Plan Malawi’s Child Rights Advisor.

“These children are risking their health for 11p a day and multinational tobacco companies, who profit vastly from child labour, need to take a more active responsibility for their involvement.”

Plan are also promoting birth registration to help enforce Malawian laws on child labour, which prohibit children under 14 from working. "The lack of such registration makes it difficult to prove that working children are under the age of 14," says country director Lillian Okwirry.

Finding alternatives

Additionally, Plan are trying to create safety nets and possibilities for alternative crops that will provide a higher and more reliable income than tobacco.

Plan runs a project in Kasunga where farmers join together in groups and, with the help of credit, produce alternative crops such as pepper, cassava and tea that needn't depend on child labour.