By Devaa Ramalingam – Art in Tanzania intern
Life as a kid in Tanzania is more challenging than people presume. The poverty there turns children, who are the future of Tanzania, into labourers. Need overcomes all their wants, as they need necessities for their families to survive.
In Tanzania, approximately 4.2 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 are engaged in child labour. Despite all the amenities the government provides to the people of Tanzania, families often have to send their children to work due to financial difficulties.
Not only children, but also mothers, are working as labourers in demanding jobs, such as stone mining, to earn a living. As there is a lack of rain and many families rely on agriculture as their primary source of income, they are forced to work as labourers along with their children in stone mining.
In Tanzania, children are not only working as labourers but are also forced to quit school because of the hardships they face.
The children working are in the age groups of 5–17. Some of them attend school in the morning and work at night, while others drop out of school to work full-time, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. or later in the evening. If the situation is too dire, they must work until they can produce buckets of stones worth 4000–5000, according to their daily needs.
These children don’t have the everyday lifestyle that children typically enjoy, which they also deserve. Most people don’t even get three meals, despite all their hard work. After all the work until late in the evening, they wake up the next day only to find that they don’t have breakfast, which gives them the energy they need to work.
Like every other kid, these kids dream of becoming officers or doctors. However, due to their school situation, they can’t. They cannot afford the uniforms and shoes for school. Some children have given up on dreaming of going to school because they think they will not receive any help.
On top of child labour being an unfair act, which is still evident in many places like Tanzania, these children get paid very little, even though they work a lot. Even worse, some don’t receive payment.
It is not relevant to them whether they are unable or can’t work due to any medical situation; they wake up every day and go to work, because many of their parents also have medical problems, which makes it impossible for them to work.
