Wissam is nearly fourteen. He works as junior electrician in a car garage and gets annoyed when he is described as a ‘child’.

He smiles sarcastically while watching a TV program about child labour, saying that dropping out of school was the only solution to the poverty from which his family suffers.

Wissam even mocks those who discuss the phenomenon of child labour on TV.

“They can’t be trusted,” he says. “They wear expensive clothes, sit in air-conditioned rooms and smoke expensive cigarettes.” They have never experienced poverty or hunger so how can they talk about it?

Like many children in Jordan, poverty deprived Wissam of his childhood. At a young age his school uniform was replaced with work clothes.

The latest census estimates that the number of working children in Jordan is around 33,000 out of a total labour force of 1.2 million. However, other estimates suggest the real number exceeds 50,000.

With Jordanians going to the polls for the country’s parliamentary elections on Wednesday, human rights activists are waiting to see how the issue of child labour will be tackled by the Jordanian legislative.

But the reality on the ground – both the demand for cheap labour and the socio-economic conditions which force children into work – mean that any legal changes will take some time to become standard practice.

Breadwinner

Wissam states with pride that he was only nine years old when he started working in a garage in the Jordanian capital of Amman. As the only boy in a family of four girls and a disabled father, he had little choice but to become the breadwinner at the earliest opportunity.

After nearly five years of hard work, Wissam was able to master his trade, although he was not always treated well.

When asked if he had suffered any abuse he did not seem to know what this meant.

Following an explanation he insists that his employer treated him very well and that his monthly salary, of 170 Jordanian dinars, or US$240, is a good one, even if older colleagues get more money for doing similar tasks.

He later mentioned that his employer used to hit him when he made mistakes but the beatings were reduced after Wissam mastered his job.

Reality

Many academic and union reports concentrate on the fact that working children face physical, mental and even sexual abuse, while also enduring harsh working conditions like long hours, physically demanding work and poor wages.

Article 32 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, ratified by Jordan, states that: “States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”

The National Forensic Centre neither officially confirms receiving cases for children suffering from abuse at work nor does it disclose any figures in this area.

However, a study made by Dr Hani Jahshan, an international expert in violence and forensic medicine, confirms that 15 per cent of all sexual abuse cases involving children under the age of 18 are connected with the sexual exploitation of boys at work or prostitution for girls.

And it is suspected that the true figure is even higher.

In principle, Jordanian law conforms to the international conventions related to child labour.

The latest national resolution, issued by the Minister of Labour Mahmoud Kafaween, sets out to prevent children from working in dangerous, hard or health damaging jobs. However, in reality, these laws are not always adhered to.

For example, Jordanian law declares that businesses found to employ minors have to pay a fine of between 100 (US$140) and 500 (US$700) Jordanian dinars, and in the case of repeat offenders this penalty is doubled.

But ministry inspectors often tolerate irregularities as most of these children are in desperate need for work.

An inspection manager at the Ministry of Labour said that in one of the inspectors’ rounds, 113 cases of child labour were detected in 100 establishments.

Of that number, 26 employers were charged and 24 were given warnings. The remaining 63 were merely advised on labour laws.