Letter: Child labour at home and abroad

Sir: Randhir Singh Bains (Letters, 5 January) misses three very important points about child labour.

1. It produces a cheap, malleable, throw-away workforce.

2. It goes hand-in-hand with adult unemployment. Why employ the parent when the child is so much cheaper and more obedient?

3. It prepares a future labour force of unskilled, broken adults with low self-esteem.

Yours faithfully,

ALAN WHITTAKER

Piltdown, East Sussex

6 January

The writer was editor of the child slavery publications of Anti-Slavery International, 1979-91.