Malawi trying to enforce child labor laws

LONDON, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Malawi is paying more attention to its child labor laws after a report revealed thousands of children working on tobacco farms, Plan International says.

Representatives of the children's advocacy group in London told CNN after its August report Malawi officials offered to determine the extent of the problem and better enforce child labor laws.

The August report indicated about 78,000 boys and girls as young as 5 years old work in tobacco harvesting, earning 17 cents for a 12-hour day.

The work is not only backbreaking but hazardous, the report said. The children handle burley tobacco leaves without gloves, and rarely bathe or wash their clothes. They absorb the same amount of nicotine in one day of harvesting that they would from smoking 50 cigarettes, the group says.

"Sometimes it feels like you don't have enough breath ... . You reach a point where you cannot breathe because of the pain in your chest. Then the blood comes when you vomit. At the end, most of this dies and then you remain with a headache," the report quoted one child describing how he felt at the end of the day.

A 2007 UNICEF survey estimated 29 percent of children ages 5-14 in Malawi worked, the majority in agriculture. The tobacco crop is 70 percent of Malawi's foreign exchange and 30 percent of the southeast African country's gross domestic product.