Diamanterne i Sierra Leone booster økonomien og væksten. Men fattigdom og arbejdsløshed tvinger tusindvis af børn ud af skolen for at grave efter diamanter. Og det er regeringens skyld, mener minearbejderne.
KOIDU, 6 December 2012 (IRIN): About 70 percent of Sierra Leone’s youth are unemployed. But thousands of young men dig and shovel gravel (grus, red.) in search of the precious stone: diamonds.
Twenty-year-old Alhadji Gborie, who left his home town of Lungi near the capital Freetown for the mining fields, blames the government for failing to provide jobs.
“There is too much talk from the president. Let him come here and work for a day to see how it is,” said Gborie, standing in a thigh-deep, muddy water hole.
On 17 November Sierra Leoneans re-elected President Ernest Bai Koroma for a second term of office, helped by the fact that the country has seen extensive (vidtgående, red.) infrastructure improvement and economic growth in the past five years.
Driven by exports of gold, diamonds and iron ore (malm, red.), the country’s economy will grow by up to 21,3 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, but this wealth has yet to filter down to most ordinary Sierra Leoneans.
“In many families, children are becoming the breadwinners (familieforsørger, red.),” Esate Konteh, from a local NGO in Kono Region, told IRIN. “When the civil war ended in 2002, many families had lost one or two parents. Some of them had their limbs amputated and could not work or were not eligible for employment.”
Children are paid 10,000-20,000 leones (15-30 kr., red.) a day and 40,000 leones if they find diamonds. In Kenema, to the east of the capital, and Koidu around 3,000 children are estimated to be working in the mines, but there are no official figures and the number might be much higher, Konteh said.
Youths work either in mines, open pits or riverbeds.
Læs videre her: http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96982/SIERRA-LEONE-Diamonds-lure-children-out-of-school
Begynd fra: “Marginalized youth”
