Myanmar boy earns 3.7 cents for each load of rock he hauls

YANGON, MYANMAR — Early every morning, 11-yearold Chit Toke wakes up in the small bamboo shack beside a creek where his family lives. In the near distance, new high rises are springing up. He pulls on oversized green trousers and walks over to the river where boats are waiting for labourers to unload gravel collected from river beds to supply the booming construction industry in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city.

Chit joins the queue of workers, seeking to help feed his family by hauling baskets of stones, each weighing more than 19 kilograms, 30 metres from boat to shore. If he can haul that basket 100 times each day, he can earn 3,500 kyats ($3.70).

Child labour remains widespread in Myanmar as the country tries to rebuild its economy after five decades of military misrule. More than one-third of Myanmar’s children between the ages of seven and 16 work, according to the United Nations. Chit’s family moved to the city after Cyclone Nargis ripped through the Irrawaddy delta farming region in 2008 and he’s been doing this backbreaking labour for almost four years.

He lifts a cane basket filled with gravel onto one shoulder and gets his balance, so he can safely walk barefoot over narrow wooden planks from boat to land. For each basket of rocks he dumps, he receives a chit — worth 35 kyats (3.7 U.S. cents) — putting them in a small plastic bottle tied to his waist.

A friend, 8, also works here. But some children are more fortunate. Each morning, he sees some of the neighbourhood kids head to school in their uniforms.

“I want to go to school with him,” he says, putting his arm around his best friend, Myo Oo. “But I cannot go because I cannot afford to go to school. I have to work.”