Publication-Date: 03.09.2000   Publication: SCMP


Headline: `I feel ashamed. She's so small. I'm sorry for what's happened'
Byline: Martin Wong

THE eyes of An Weihung fill with tears as he looks at a picture of the 13-year-old daughter he sent almost 500km away to pack toys for McDonald's in a sweatshop factory.


"I feel ashamed," the farmer says. "She's still so small but she has to work. I am sorry for what has happened to her."

An Luping was pictured in the Sunday Morning Post last week in the factory where she and other underage children work 16 hours a day, seven days a week at City Toys in Shenzhen to pack toys offered with McDonald's meals around the world.


She told Post investigators she was 14 but the school yearbook produced by her father at his home in Genzi village near Gaozhou town, Guangdong province, tells a different story. She was born in November 1986 and is just 13.


"She loved to study. She wanted to continue with her education but I couldn't help. We are too poor," says the 36-year-old father, with his two younger children, sons Luchiu, 11, and Lumin, 12, beside him.


Luping went away to work soon after An's 34-year-old wife was employed at a textile factory in Dongguan. Like many people in his village, Mr An Weihung said he could not afford his daughter's school fees - and like many other children of her age who should still be studying at school, Luping had to put away her books and go to work.


Parents have to pay between 3,000 yuan (HK$2,800) and 4,000 yuan a year to keep secondary students at school. The price for a primary school place is 1,000 yuan a year - in an area where the average annual household income is 2,000 to 3,000 yuan.


A solution to the problem of paying for Luping's schooling came in July when representatives from City Toys came to the village recruiting workers for its toy factory in Shenzhen. Age, it was made clear, was not an obstacle.


Luping, who felt ashamed of the burden she was placing on her family, begged her father to let her go. He reluctantly agreed and sat with her as she was interviewed by the representatives in their home.


"We were told children of any age could go to work in the factory. Most of those who went were girls - only a few were boys," he said. Other villagers said they were told the factory preferred girls because they were more obedient.


"The interviewers didn't ask much. They just wanted children who looked older than they were and who could stand up to hard working conditions."

He admitted his daughter used someone else's identity card. "She borrowed her cousin's ID card. They look similar but, in fact, it doesn't matter. The factory knows about this," he said.


The interviewers told villagers their children would earn 24 yuan a day. They would have to pay 120 yuan a month for meals and 60 yuan for accommodation.


They also told them the children would work 12 hours a day, a claim he would find to be untrue. "One day, my daughter called home and said she was being made to work until 1am. She started work at 7.30am the previous day."

The father recalled how he said goodbye to Luping and saw her packed into the back of a lorry with 40 to 50 other people, many children, for the eight-hour journey.


"Of course, there was no air-conditioning in the lorry, it was over 30 degrees Celsius," he said. "A few days later, another lorry came to the village and took another 40 to 50 people to the Shenzhen factory."

When the lorries had gone, the village of a few hundred people was much quieter. Almost half the children had been taken away.


"Many of them were very small - smaller than my Luping. They'd just left primary school and hadn't finished junior high school. All of them lived nearby."

Some of the children returned to their families soon afterwards, shaken and upset by the unexpectedly harsh working conditions. Only the tougher ones stayed on. Among them, Luping.


"She is really a tough character," he said.


Cheung Ling, 15, a schoolmate of Luping, said about 160 pupils from her school - Genzi First Secondary School - went to City Toys in early July. Most of them were underage.


"There was a pamphlet circulated among the pupils recruiting people to the factory," she said.


Another pupil, Ha Wei, 15, went to City Toys to work with a crowd of classmates on July 6.


"However, many of us did not do anything in the factory. They said there were too many of us for them to manage, and that we looked too young. Only a few of my classmates are still there," she said.


Explaining why he could not afford to keep his daughter, Mr An Weihung said: "My father passed away three years ago. He had a chronic disease and I had to pay the two years of medical bills which amounted to 30,000 to 40,000 yuan alone. I still owe 30,000 yuan."

He does not expect his daughter to help pay his debt, but having her at work saves him from seeing his debts mount further. "She earns a small sum. Living in a village as a farmer, we have our own farm which gives us rice to eat. If we earn less, we just buy less meat and vegetables," he said.


The family has a small holding where they grow rice and lychees.


"In a good year, we can earn 5,000 to 6,000 yuan through selling lychees. But there are not many good years; sometimes we can earn nothing," he said.


Few parents in Genzi can afford to send their children to junior high school after primary school when they reach 13.


He said more junior high school pupils left after the first year because of the burden of fees. They then joined former classmates who dropped out earlier to work at factories in Shenzhen and Dongguan.


Poor mainland families generally do not send their children to work to generate income, but to avoid the cost of school fees.


The first nine years of schooling in China is compulsory and, if pupils attend their local schools, tuition is free. However, there are a number of other fees such as management fees and charges for books.


In some schools in remote areas, such as Genzi First Secondary School attended by Luping, water and electricity fees are also charged.


Lai Mei, a mother of four children who also lives in Genzi, sent her daughters, aged 14 and 16, to work at a Shenzhen textile firm two years ago. "My small daughter went to work after leaving primary school because I didn't have the money for her to continue studying.


"The monthly junior school fee is 400 yuan. It is too expensive," she said. Last year, the family made just over 1,000 yuan selling lychees.


Ho Ling, 14, a junior high school pupil who also lives in Genzi, said she had many classmates who had quit after the first term last year.


"I was studying in Grade One last year, and about seven pupils of the 70 from my class went to work after the first term. When they left, they just said goodbye and told me that they were going to work."

Sowers Action, a Hong Kong charity that specialises in helping mainland children study, said it is subsidising 20,809 mainland pupils in three provinces - Hunan, Yunnan and Guangdong.


Marjorie Cheung Yung-ching, project officer of the group, said Gaozhou was not one of the poorest towns in China.


"In some remote villages, the average income per person is only a few hundred yuan," she said.


Ms Cheung said it was impossible to know how many children gave up on school because of their families' financial difficulties.


"There are many poor areas in China that we fail to help. We can't even visit these places because of transport problems.


"In the mainland, there is no penalty for parents whose children drop out of school."

Dr Robert Fung Hing-biu, chairman of United Nation Children's Fund-Hong Kong committee, said China as a United Nations member should follow international conventions. "Child labour is strictly forbidden," he said.


Mr An Weihung is not aware of the international conventions his daughter's employment in Shenzhen breach. He just wishes she was back home with him.


"I miss my daughter very much but there's nothing I can do," he said. "She is the one in the family who always chats with me. She's such a bright and optimistic girl - always smiling and always being very naughty."

The names of some children and their parents in this report have been changed to protect the workers and their families.

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