Quito (Fides Service) - It is estimated that between 500 and 1000 children in Ecuador, aged 5 to 7, are employed in collecting and handling refuse. In its Convention number 182 the International Labour Organisation lists refuse recycling among the most dangerous jobs in which children are used along with mining, brick-making, farm work and building.
Last year, the city of Santo Domingo de los Colorados,130 km from the capital Quito, vowed to eliminate the employment of children in refuse handling. Thanks to a pilot project launched with the support of UN/ILO International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour IPEC and Development and Self-support local NGO the Santo Domingo de los Colorados city Council has already rescued 101 minors, 68 boys and 33 girls from bonded labour at the city’s refuse dumps.
The city Council has also launched awareness campaigns aimed at public opinion, state and private institutions and also among refuse collectors themselves to increase knowledge of the problem and encourage commitment to ban the employment of minors in this and other types of work.
Santo Domingo de los Colorados city Council aims to promote a nation-wide signature campaign in a bid to involve the whole country, the public and private sector, national, regional, local institutions, agencies of international cooperation, in the struggle to ban child labour in refuse collection as part of a specific project to improve Ecuador’s national refuse-handling system solid. With the national Association of City Councils, Santo Domingo de los Colorados city Council is promoting a bill to regulate refuse handling work throughout the country, a bill which will explicitly ban child labour in this field. (R.Z.) (Agenzia Fides 26/3/2004; righe 24 - parole 324)