Why Do Children Die In “Battle For Harvest”?
- 5.10.2016, 8:38
The tragedy in Maladzechna district has caused a lot of questions.
The death of a 13-year-old schoolgirl raises many questions, which answers are far beyond the potato field near Maladzechna. But we'll start from there.
How did a 13-year-old schoolgirl happen to be at harvesting of potatoes? Since the Article 89 of the Education Code prohibits students’ involvement in carrying-out of work, not provided by the curriculum and the educational institution’s plan, Salidarnasts writes.
It is a violation of the Labour Code, which allows the conclusion of an employment contract with persons under 14 years only with the written consent of one of the parents (adoptive parent, guardian). In this case, such person performs easy work which is not causing harm to health and does not disrupt the learning process.
It will be too easy to blame everything on teachers who were on duty in the field, and on the truck driver. After all, it wasn’t their decision to make the students work.
And now let’s look beyond the case in Maladzechna and try to answer the question why such thing could happen in general.
In discussions on whether to involve students to harvesting, the following argument is not uncommon: farms pay with cheap vegetables for the help, which allows schools to seriously save their budgets.
This is our reality. In addition to payment for using textbooks (say ‘hi’ to the Constitution, guaranteeing free education), fees for renovations and other donations, parents have to send their children to harvest the potatoes in order to help the school to save money. It may be worth looking for a more civilized ways to save the state budget?
One more question. Why haven’t agricultural enterprises, which have been getting multimillion-dollar government grants for three decades already, yet learned how to harvest by their own forces? Is it possible to imagine a similar situation in Poland or Lithuania?
Unlikely. While in our country, which annually fights in the “Battle of the harvest”, child labour in the fields has became a silent norm. And this is a question for all of us. After all, the silence of most of us, is most likely perceived as consent.