Hong Kong is home to about 2,000 children who perform menial labor to help their families make ends meet, a community group says.
In a study conducted between June 2004 and August this year, Hong Kong's Society for Community Organization interviewed 87 children aged below 15 in Sham Shui Po who perform mostly dirty and sometimes hazardous jobs in their spare time, such as cleaning, dumping garbage or collecting newspapers, cardboards, aluminum cans and other recycled material.
The children work an average of 6.7 hours a week, with some for as long as 23.5 hours, earning HK$156 a month on average.
More than 60 percent of the children give all their earnings to their parents, many of whom are welfare recipients or "working poor" – workers whose wages fail to meet basic family needs. Other children put aside the money for their education.
SoCO community organizer Sze Lai-shan said as the study found one child in every 154 from impoverished families in Sham Shui Po had jobs, it's estimated there are 1,865 child workers across Hong Kong.
Read more here.
