- Save the Children Sri Lanka launches report
By Naveed Rozais
Sri Lanka’s tea estate and plantations form an integral part of Sri Lanka’s modern heritage. The image of a smiling tea plucker is iconic and is one that embodies Sri Lanka as much as our beaches, our wildlife, and our historical sites, particularly on the global stage.
Estate and plantation workers form 6% of our population, but historically, from the colonial history of our tea industry though to the present day, the estate and plantation population segments lag significantly behind the rest of our population in accessing healthcare and child education services.
As part of a private-public partnership with the Sri Lankan Government and stakeholders in the Lankan tea industry, Sri Lanka’s arm of Save the Children, the world’s leading independent organisation for children, recently concluded a child rights risk assessment across the tea industry supply chain.
The objective of the assessment was to enhance existing child rights principles across the tea industry supply chain by understanding the risks and issues involved, with research being conducted between September and December 2019. A virtual launch event was held on 28 August to share the conclusions reached by researchers.
Save the Children International Senior Technical Advisor for Child Protection Buddhini Withana shared that household income and expenditure showed communities’ abilities to keep and maintain rights, going on to explain that more than half of estate and plantation labourers earn less than Rs. 10,000 a month, leaving them struggling to cover basic expenses and impacting things like healthcare and education access. This financial strain makes children in these communities with 18.2% of children surveyed for the assessment having left school before the age of 12.
The study looked at the perspectives of both parents and children for leaving school. From a parental perspective, the most common reason for parents discontinuing their children’s education was lack of financial resources (36.8%), followed by children’s lack of interest or poor academic performance (25.3%). Closely related to the family’s financial inability to afford more schooling for children is their need for additional income (15.8%), which leads to children joining the workforce early to support the rest of their siblings.
Children’s reasons for leaving school reflect that of their parents to a degree. For them, the most common reason is their own poor performance in school (35%) followed by their lack of interest (25%). On the surface, these reasons might seem to be related to personal reasons and capabilities of the child, but could in fact very well be linked to other factors, such as not having a supportive family environment to help them with their studies, not being able to hire a tutor when they struggle in school, having psychological difficulties from broken families, etc.
The risk assessment also looked at the risk children face in the home, with children surveyed rating their feeling of safety within the home out of 10. The assessment found that children living in their own homes reported higher feelings of safety (9.5 out 10), while those living in housing facilities on tea estates felt significantly less safe (with a rating of 9 out of 10).
The report also looked at violence within the estate and plantation communities with 36.6% of children saying they were punished in the past six months, of whom 77.7% were punished by their parents. A point of note is that 85.2% of children who were punished in the past six months were subject to corporal punishment such as spanking, beating, and slapping.
On witnessing violence, 15.8% of parents claim their children witnessed violence and 41.5% of the violence they witnessed happened at home, either between the parents or other family members. As for the children who participated in the survey, 34.7% said they witnessed a violent fight at least once and 21.8% of those said they often witnessed violence. 14.4% of those violent fights took place at home. 14.4% of children who witnessed a violent fight said they were affected by it and the other 9.4% declined to answer.
Other risks highlighted during the research were childcare needs and gaps, with parents working longer hours, they were likely less able to care for their children, with 27.7% of parents reporting that their job frequently prevented them from spending enough time with their children.
Looking at maternity leave and breastfeeding, research showed many estate labourers did not take maternity leave as they are not compensated, with many women going back to work fulltime as soon as a week after giving birth. Breastfeeding is also not considered in many factories, and workers are given no official breaks, making it very difficult to feed babies on time.
Research also showed a high risk for potential child labour, with 73% of children working on the plantations, having started working before the age of 12. Labourers said they have no choice but to get their children involved in work. A female labourer described how a child she knows had to start working after his mother fell ill and became bedridden.
The key recommendations of the risk assessment included strengthening child protection mechanisms with the tea industry developing and shaping clear guidelines, devising minimum income level guidelines, reconsidering the pricing structures of tea and their impact on the vulnerable, increasing estate and community-based awareness on nutrition for pregnant and lactating mothers, and building child-friendly spaces for recreation that can also double as childcare.
The launch event was commemorated by a plenary discussion on “How can the mother and child-friendly standards be moved to small and mid-scale industry?” The discussion was facilitated by Save the Children Director Policy Advocacy and Research Ranjan Weththasinghe. The panel included Save the Children Sweden Representative Annika Shelly, Department of Probation and Child Care Services Assistant Commissioner Sandareka Liyanage, Horana Plantations Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Johann Rodrigo, and Centre for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility Director Ines Kämpfer.
