Child worker loses his life in Giresun

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Ramazan Şimşek (16) was crushed by a hoeing machine and lost his life in Bulancak district of Giresun province.

As announced by the Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG Assembly), Şimşek was on his way back from ploughing a field when the manual ploughing machine rolled over, crushing 16-year-old Şimşek.

Most recently, the deceased bodies of three children were found in Turkey's central Anatolian province of Sivas on June 11 after they had got missing in Kızılırmak River. It was understood that they were the children of seasonal agricultural workers who came to the province for potato farming.

June 12 was the world day against child labor

Last week, Minister of Family, Labor and Social Services Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk made a statement on June 12 World Day Against Child Labor.

Indicating that "Turkey was successfully struggling against child labor," Minister Zümrüt Selçuk said that while the rate of child labor was 10.3 percent in 1999, this rate dropped to 4.4 percent in 2019.

On the other side, speaking to bianet on the same day, Murat Çakır from the İSİG Assembly said, "When it comes to child labor or occupational homicides, the Ministry usually proportions it based on the number of workers and deaths. It says that the rate of fatalities and accidents has decreased according to number of workers.

"There is a huge problem when you look at it proportionally. They present the proportional increase rather than the real one. There are also the informal data. So, those data do not make much sense anymore. This number has recently increased especially with the arrival of refugees."

17 child workers died in the first 5 months

Çakır also shared the following data by years:

"59 children lost their lives in occupational homicides in 2013, 54 children in 2014, 63 children in 2015, 56 children in 2016, 60 children in 2017, 67 children in 2018 and 67 children in 2019. In the first five months of this year, 17 children lost their lives while working.

"While 1,923 workers lost their lives in 2019, we detected 1,736 fatalities in 2019. The number of child deaths is the same despite this decrease."

54 agricultural workers died in May

According to the latest data shared by the Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG Assembly), six child workers lost their lives in occupational homicides in agricultural sector in May. While 156 workers in total died in May, 54 of them were working in agriculture. In other words, 35 percent of occupational homicides occurred in this sector. (AÖ/SD)