Nearly 6,000 children are engaged in labor in just one district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, according to Taliban officials. These children are working in the brick fields of Sorkh Rod district, many of them for little pay and under harsh conditions.
Families of the child laborers have expressed concern over their children’s plight, explaining that economic hardship has left them with no other option. Some of these children are under 10 years old and have been deprived of an education to help support their families.
“My wish is to go to school,” said Bilal, one of the young laborers. Bushra, another child worker, echoed this sentiment: “I don’t have the opportunity to study. What can we do? It’s a necessity.”
Parents cited poverty as the driving force behind their decision to send their children to work in these brick fields. “Due to poverty, we were deprived of education. I got into debt. I owe 50,000 to 60,000 Afghanis,” said Zarwali, a laborer in the region.
Despite the Taliban’s claims that they have worked to improve the economic conditions in Afghanistan over the past three years, Faridullah Haqqani, the Taliban’s director of Labor and Social Affairs in Nangarhar, acknowledged the scale of child labor in the province. “We conducted a survey and found that approximately 5,879 children, both boys and girls, are engaged in hard labor in Sorkh Rod alone,” Haqqani said.
Residents of Nangarhar believe that thousands more children are likely working under similar conditions in other districts across the province.
