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Child Labor Plagues Greece

childworkingJune 12 is the World Day Against Child Labor, but it seems that the fight against child labor has not yet started in Greece, where 100,000 “invisible” kids work long hours for low wages.
George Moschos, Deputy Ombudsman in charge of children’s rights, stated that child workers in Greece are not recorded by the state.
In Greece according to estimates, as official data does not exist, Moschos said there are thousands of children who work illegally, their number surpassing 100,000. The reduction of authorization provision for child labor is also alarming.
In 2010, 1,462 authorization licenses for child labor were issued in Greece, in 2011 their number fell to 874 to reach 562 in 2012. As Moschos underlined, this drop does not show that the number of the children who work fell correspondingly, but that the authorization provision for child labor decreased dramatically, as uninsured work costs less, controls are rare and there is tolerance by the state.
School dropout is another factor that has to be seriously considered. The Ministry of Education though does not provide official data on school dropout rates in Greece. According to Eurostat, 11.4 percent of pupils did not continue with  secondary education, which means that 70,000 children and teenagers quit school.
The Greek Educational Institute estimates that around 70 percent of the children who quit school work.

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