Education minister criticized for 'normalizing child labor'

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Minister of National Education Ziya Selçuk has received criticism from the public and rights defenders after sharing a photo of him with an agricultural child worker on Twitter.

"Last Sunday, I was in the fields with the children of seasonal agricultural workers. We exchanged the summer holiday books with a bunch of tomatoes :)" he said in the tweet. Selçuk also asked teachers and school principals to visit agricultural child workers and give them books.

Many social media users criticized the minister for "normalizing child labor."

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Kansu Yıldırım from the Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG) said that 67 child workers were killed in the last year and 60 percent of them were agricultural workers.

Diyarbakır Bar Association Children's Rights Center released a statement on its Twitter account, recalling that it is illegal to employ a child younger than 15 and those who are aged above 15 can only be employed without hindering their education.

"Although it is claimed that the children of seasonal workers are not employed and that they are only with their parents there, statistical data show the exact opposite and the level of child labor in seasonal agriculture is revealed," it said.

"In both cases, it is obvious that the right to education is disrupted by the children staying away from their schools since the harvest and working periods will coincide with the school year. Parents and the state are responsible for all situations that hinder children's right to education."

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(AÖ/VK)