Child labor in Turkey: Second death in 3 days
* Photo: AA
Click to read the article in Turkish
Having fallen into a river in Turkey's central Anatolian province of Eskişehir, a 13-year-old child worker's dead body was found on October 14.
On Monday (October 12), another child worker, Hamza Çökükoğlu (12), lost his life in an irrigation pond in Turkey's southeastern province of Antep, where he was shepherding his family's cattle with his brother.
CLICK - 12-year-old child worker loses his life in irrigation pond
As reported by the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA), Gamze Kakız (13) from Turkey's southeastern province of Urfa, went to the district of Günyüzü in Eskişehir to work as a seasonal agricultural worker.
While she was washing her feet on the shore of Sakarya river, she fell into the water the other day. The ones who saw the incident reported it and paramedics and gendarmerie officers were referred to the scene.
After search and rescue efforts of divers from the Ankara Security Directorate's Underwater Group Office, the dead body of the child was recovered from the water and sent to the hospital's mortuary.
Gamze Kakız...
— İSİG Meclisi (@isigmeclisi) October 14, 2020
13 yaşında, mevsimlik tarım işçisi...
Ayaklarını yıkamak için gittiği Sakarya Nehri kıyısında suya düşüp boğularak hayatını kaybetti...
Şanlıurfa'dan ailesiyle birlikte çalışmak için Eskişehir Günyüzü'ne gelmişlerdi... pic.twitter.com/XpPQCtUR95
According to the recent data shared by the Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG Assembly), at least 177 workers lost their lives in occupational homicides in September 2020 and at least 1,493 workers lost their lives while working in the first nine months of 2020. While six of the deceased were children in September, seven of them were women, five were migrants (three from Syria and two from Afghanistan) and four were unionized workers.
Making a statement on the occasion of June 12 World Day Against Child Labor, Minister of Family, Labor and Social Services Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk said that Turkey's struggle against child labor was successfully continuing and indicated that the rate of child labor dropped from 10.3 percent in 1999 to 4.4 percent in 2019. (AÖ/SD)