ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 16 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
July 7, 2014
Hauling gravel: Daily toil for Myanmar boy, 11
By Esther Htusan
GRUELLING GIG. Chit Toke, foreground, is
helped by his mother to lift a basket of gravel weighing
about 42 pounds in a barge anchored on the banks of
the Yangon River. A worker receives 35 Kyats (3.7
U.S. cents) for hauling a basket full of gravel from a
boat to shore, walking a distance of about 100 feet on
a narrow timber beam. Early every morning, 11-year-
old Chit Toke wakes up in the small bamboo shack
where his family lives besides a creek. In the near dis-
tance, he can see new luxury high rises springing up.
(AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)
The Associated Press
ANGON, Myanmar — Early every
morning, 11-year-old Chit Toke
wakes up in the small bamboo
shack beside a creek where his family
lives. In the near distance, he can see new
high rises springing up. He pulls on
oversized green trousers — part of a
cast-off school uniform — and walks over
to the river where boats are docked. They
are waiting for laborers to unload gravel
collected from river beds to supply the
booming construction industry in Yangon,
the biggest city and commercial capital of
Myanmar, also known as Burma.
Chit Toke joins the queue of workers,
seeking to earn enough to help feed his
family by hauling baskets full of stones,
each weighing more than 42 pounds, from
boat to shore. If he can haul that basket
100 times each day over a 100-foot path, he
can earn 3,500 kyats ($3.70).
Child labor remains widespread in
Myanmar as the country tries to rebuild its
economy after five decades of military
misrule. More than one-third of
Myanmar’s children between the ages of
Y
seven and 16 work, according to the United
Nations. Chit Toke’s family moved to the
city after Cyclone Nargis ripped through
the Irrawaddy Delta farming region in
2008.
“When we were hit by the cyclone, we
had no hope and everything was gone. We
could barely survive and I had to work
from an early age, as my father had died,”
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the boy recalls.
He has been doing this backbreaking
labor for almost four years. “When I first
worked here, I felt really tired. My
shoulders were really painful at night and
my legs, too,” Chit Toke says.
He lifts a cane basket filled with gravel
onto one shoulder and gets his balance, so
that he can safely walk barefoot over
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narrow wooden planks that connect the
boat to land. Each time he dumps his rocks
on a pile to be hauled away by trucks, he
receives a chit to show he has hauled one
basket’s worth. Each chit can be
exchanged for 35 kyats (3.7 U.S. cents). He
collects the chits in a small plastic bottle
tied to his waist.
An eight-year-old friend also works
here. But some children are more
fortunate. Each morning, he sees some of
the neighborhood kids head to school in
their uniforms.
“I want to go to school with him,” he says,
putting his arm around the shoulders of
one of them, his best friend, Myo Oo. “But I
cannot go because I cannot afford to go to
school. I have to work.”
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