School children in Malta’s twilight economy

Abstract

Malta's economy is characterised by a very active 'underground' sector that produces between ten to twenty per cent of the country's GDP (Delia, 1987). This article reports on an aspect which has received little attention from researchers or from policy makers: the activity of under-age ('child') workers who labour in what Finn (1984) has called the 'twilight economy'. In order to draw up any statistics regarding the extent which child labour is present in a country, one must first def the words 'child' and 'labour'. According to Convention No. 138 the International Labour Organisation, 'child' refers to person below fifteen years of age. The same convention (Article 2) a states that the basic minimum age for employment or work sb not be less than the age of completion of compulsory school: and in any case not less than 15 years. It is important to note that Reconlmendation No. 146 7) states that the objective of ILO Members should be to raise this minimum age to 15 The same Convention attaches great importance to the term 'employment or work'. Swepston (1982) notes that this definition of labour ensures that all economic activity done by children taken into consideration, regardless of their formal employment status. He notes that in many countries many young persons who do not work under a contract of employment simply are not covered by the legislation. They therefore have no protection in regard to the minimum wage a which they may work, nor in such basic matters as wages, hours of work and social security benefits (Swepston, 1982). This is further complicated by the fact that measuring the productivity of children's economic activities is very difficult, since their contribution is so often indirect, and their activity may not be considered as work (Schildkrout, 1980). It is important to point out that the ILO Convention does not impose a blanket prohibition on 'child labour'. What it does set out to do is to regulate the conditions under which these young people may be allowed to work. It prohibits the imposition children of labour which calls for greater physical and mental resources than they normally possess or which interferes with their education and development. If we take into consideration the above clarification regarding the meaning of 'child labour', and if we look at the results of statistical surveys carried out by a number of international organisations, it becomes immediately clear that the incidence of children's involvement in industrial and non-industrial work is very high indeed. ILO statistics (Swepston, 1982, p.591) estimate the number of working children under 15 to be 55 million for the world as a whole. However, as Schildkrout (1980, p.379) points out, such figures are often based on census reports which take only the formal wage sector into account. In fact, a United Nations study (Economic and Social Council, 1981) considers that the figure of 145 million children is much closer to the mark. While the problem is clearly more prevalent in developing countries such as India, Colombia and a number of African nations, it is also present in economically developed countries such as the United Kingdom (MacLennan, 1980), New Zealand (Sultana, 1990), and the United States (Bingham, 1990), to mention only three.