Rural population’s exodus to towns, especially Chisinau, abroad, looking for a place of work which would offer them a decent life, led to an acute insufficiency of labor force in agricultural field. These conditions created a favorable climate to attract children and pensioners into work field, infants being often obliged to give up on studies and are involved in hard labor, sometimes dangerous.

The data obtained as a result of different studies made in the country outline a rather serious and alarming situation – every tenth child that works in vegetable and fruit growing field is exposed to harmful to health substances, they show in ,, Evaluarea rapida a muncii copiilor în sectorul horticol din Moldova’’, made by the National Federation of Employers in Agriculture and Food Industry. Major lack of labor force in rural areas and limited access to modern technologies and agricultural equipment are among the main causes.

Solutions to prevent and fight against the most serious forms of infants’ labor in agriculture were identified during a national workshop for change of experience, organized within the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry with the occasion of the World Day against Child Labor, marked on June, 12th.

The event’s partners - the National Federation of Employers in Agriculture and Food Industry, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry and the Ministry of Economy and Commerce concentrated their efforts on fighting against the most serious and dangerous forms of child’s labor in agricultural field, as a response to the generic of the World Day against Child Labor 2007: ,,Future crop: an agriculture without child’s labor’’.

This initiative was launched by the he International Labor Organization in 2002, as a way to realize the problem and consolidate the global movement to eliminate child’s labor, especially its most serious forms, harmful to infants.

Press service