Activists urge to create single database on working children in Kyrgyzstan

AKIPRESS.COM - Kyrgyzstan has no powerful system and mechanisms for monitoring the violation of children's rights in the sphere of labor relations, said the coordinator of the project "Promotion of human rights and labor rights through GSP+ in Kyrgyzstan" Cholpon Babaliyeva at the press conference in AKIpress on Jan 30. According to her, the coalition for the democracy and civil society along with the partner organizations prepared shadow reports on issues of employment entitlement of women and children within the implementation of GSP+ in Kyrgyzstan.
"To date, the statistics on child labor varies. The National Statistics Committee provided the statistics following the cluster survey, which showed that 26.7% of children aged of 15-17 years are involved in labor. According to the WHO, about 39% of children work in Kyrgyzstan. The Labor Ministry informed that 593 children were working in 2018, including 22 were involved in worst forms of labor," said Babaliyeva.
"The current system for identifying child labor and preventing the worst forms of child labor is ineffective. At the same time, the latest program to liquidate the worst forms of child labor expired in 2017 and the new program has not yet been adopted," she said.
Following the press conference, the chairman of the youth council of Kyrgyzstan Trade Unions Federation Eldiyar Karachalov states that women in Kyrgyzstan has lower wages than men regardless the equal work and work activities.