Todee, Liberia – Fourteen-year-old Emmanuel Yarsiah would rather be on the football field, playing with his friends. But instead, he’s working long hours as a coal burner with his mother, toting heavy logs in excessive heat.
By: R. Joyclyn Wea with New Narratives
“I suffering to haul water, cut grass, haul the coal, dig it, and put it in a bag,” Emmanuel said. “I suffering.”
After two years of doing this backbreaking labor, Emmanuel said he was recently diagnosed with a hernia.
According to government data, Emmanuel is among the 40 percent of Liberian children doing hazardous work. The Decent Work Act prohibits children from charcoal burning, fishing, and construction, among other occupations, because they are deemed dangerous for minors.
Furthermore, a child must be at least 15 to work in Liberia and can only work a maximum of two hours a day.
But neither labor law is enforced. It’s against this backdrop of nonenforcement, coupled with poverty, in which Sando Jones dropped out of nursery school at age 6 to work on the St. Paul River. Now 15, he spends his day fishing, without a life jacket, in a makeshift canoe, to support himself and his grandmother.
“I can come fishing to go sell fish, so I can get money because I am buying food so we can eat,” Sando said. “Sometimes I make $1000 LD, $1,500 LD, and $500 LD.”
Government officials don’t deny the life-threatening nature of jobs some underage Liberians are doing.
“A child who is on the sea could get drowned, and he’s exposed to cold all day and a child who is below 18, is not supposed to venture in such a thing,” said Patience Heah, director of child labor for the Ministry of Labor. “Even burning coal … sometimes you will have to climb on top of that thing, a child could fall into the hole.”
G-Andy Jensen, the executive director of Child Education Aid (CEA), said the continued violation of child labor laws and the engagement of children in dangerous occupations could be detrimental to the country long term.
“To be honest, the country stands to have no future,” he said. “We will be living meaninglessly because those who are supposed to replace us to maintain our legacy will not be able to do so. Liberia is not going to be a good country with a smaller number of opportune children.”
Heah said the government has lacked the institutional capacity to holistically deal with the situation. However, there is recently proposed legislation aimed at giving the existing laws some teeth. The amendments will level penalties and fines upon parents, guardians, or employers caught violating child labor laws.
“It will help to shift the behavior of parents or the community,” Heah said. “If we set an example for people, then people will know that there is a law where you will go and pay a fine or maybe be in prison for two to three months.”
But at the root of child labor law violations is Liberia’s persistent poverty – conditions are so dire that some parents force their children to do dangerous work to make ends meet. According to the World Bank’s latest poverty assessment report, three out of 10 people in Liberia’s capital are living in poverty, and it’s even worse in rural communities, where eight out of 10 people (54.5 percent) are impoverished.
Emmanuel’s mother, Rebecca Yarsiah, a 54-year-old with nine other children, regrets her son has to engage in hazardous work to help sustain the family, but she said her options are limited because her children’s fathers are not providing any financial support.
“That is the only way I can bring my children up,” she said. “(Their fathers) can born by me and they can leave me and go.”
Emmanuel’s life is school and coal burning. It takes days to finish the laborious process of making charcoal. The wood is gathered, stacked according to size, and then put into the oven where it is covered in layers of dirt and grass before being set on fire for four to five days. On a good production, Emmanuel and his mother can make 40 to 50 bags from one oven in a month. A bag of coal is sold for 400 Liberian dollars in Bensonville.
“It’s a burden, but what will we do?” Rebecca said. “We have to do it to get a living. No different way to get money, no family to help.”
In addition to the hernia, Emmanuel also sustained a leg injury when a log fell on his foot. His mother, unable to afford medical treatment, treated Emmanuel’s injuries with traditional medicine.
“I was not able to do anything for four days,” he said. “My stomach can be hurting.”
Emmanuel and Sando are struggling with physical and emotional injuries from doing hazardous jobs.
Sando said his uncle recently drowned in the river. He’s fearful because other family and friends have also lost their lives working on the river. The accidents can be attributed to the makeshift canoes, which aren’t sturdy enough, he said. Sando said he has basic swimming skills, but he’s afraid they’re not sufficient for the high tides, in his flimsy, narrow vessel, especially without a personal floatation device and working on Liberia’s second-largest river.
“I can’t wear a life jacket, but the area I can go can be risky,” he said.
After nine years of working on the river, Sando wants to return to school, but he said he needs to continue fishing to do so.
“I want to learn to be rich in the future,” he said. “I am thinking about going to the city, but I have to hustle to get enough money to leave the St. Paul River.”
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the “Investigating Liberia” project. Funding was provided by the Swedish Embassy. The funder had no say in the story’s content.
