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New law on cards to tackle child labour
"... And even though the figure may be low for Jamaica, the potential still exists for the whole situation to balloon so that every effort has to be employed now to control it,"
- Alvin McIntosh, Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security
Kingston, Jamaica - Government is moving to draft new legislation to eliminate child labour locally, despite progress in reducing the incidence of abuses here.
Locally, the ministry's 2004 survey showed that 2.2 per cent of the population, or 16,000 children between five and 17 years, were engaged in some economic activity. This is a decline from a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report in 1998 which stated that 22,000 children were involved.