Child labour has increased in Laghman province with families forced to rely on the income of their children as economic opportunities dry up, according to Laghman residents and authorities.
The families say they send their children to work in brick making factories, or to sift garbage for scraps, or work in the streets to put food on the table each day. The situation has been exacerbated by the increase in unemployment and fall in wages since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.
Zarghuna, a girl who dyes shoes in Laghman’s capital Mehtarlam, said that her family moved from Dawlat Shah district to Mehtarlam almost four years ago because of fighting between the Taliban insurgency and the Afghan National Security Forces at that time.
Her two younger sisters and a brother also work by selling water and polishing shoes. Aside from being poor, they have the additional challenge of their father being addicted to drugs.
“My siblings and I are barely able to earn enough money,” she said. “My father is a drug addict. In the evening, when we return home, he takes money from us and uses drugs.”
She said that her father’s mental and emotional health has deteriorated over the years as economic conditions grew worse and his drug addiction increased.
“My mother is sick. She has a nerve disorder. My father mistreated her so much and beat her that she got sick. We are facing a lot of problems, and we desperately need help.”
The Taliban-appointed head of Laghman’s labour and social affairs department Jamaluddin Hashemi said war, poverty, and other problems in Afghanistan have forced many children into work.
Most of the children are collecting alms or doing hard labour in the streets of the city, such as hauling bricks into ovens for baking, he said.
The Taliban is making efforts to gather and educate orphaned children in the province, with at least 900 orphans or homeless children, including 300 girls, taken from the city streets so far and receiving lessons in two educational centers, he added.
Mr Hasemi agreed that the number of working children has increased in the province compared to last year, but the province does not have exact figures.
The international NGO Save the Children said in a report in August 2023 that more than a third of Afghan children surveyed, or 38.4 percent, had been pushed into work to help support their families. A further 76.1 percent of children said they were eating less than a year earlier.
