Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2015, published 105th ILC session (2016)

Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) - Kazakhstan (Ratification: 2001)

The Committee notes that the Government’s report has not been received. It hopes that the next report will contain full information on the matters raised in its previous comments.

Repetition

Article 1 of the Convention. National policy on the effective elimination of child labour. Following its previous comments, the Committee notes the Government’s information in its report under Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), that the National Information Campaign (NIC) entitled “12 Days of Fight Against Child Labour” for the year 2013 was conducted in June 2013 under the slogan “No to child labour in the household”. The Committee notes the Government’s information that the measures undertaken within the scope of the NIC in 2013 covered more than 1.2 million children and over 200,000 adults. Moreover, the Committee notes that the various measures undertaken by the “Road to School Initiative” in 2012 which was supported by state authorities and big national companies and which covered 284,900 children from impoverished families who received assistance totalling more than 1.7 billion Kazakhstani tenge (KZT) (approximately US$1,113,900).

The Committee further notes from the Government’s report that a National Plan of Action (NAP) for 2012–14 has been adopted and is being carried out. This NAP provides measures for conducting joint investigations of the activities of legal persons and individual entrepreneurs in the harvesting, receiving and processing of cotton and tobacco, in order to prevent the illegal labour migration and exploitation of child labour as well as measures for checking on the attendance of children at general education schools during the harvest period of cotton and tobacco. The Committee requests the Government to provide information on the implementation of the NAP and on the results achieved in terms of eliminating child labour in the cotton and tobacco sector.

Article 2(1). Scope of application. Children working in the informal economy. In its previous comments, the Committee had noted that, by virtue of sections 9(2) and 1(59) of the Labour Code of 2007 (and its provisions regulating the minimum age for admission to work) applies only to persons working within the context of an employment relationship. It had also noted the Government’s indication that investigations of cases of child labour revealed the prevalence of child labour in several sectors, including activities in the informal economy such as work in city markets and in car washes. In this regard, the Committee had encouraged the Government to take measures to strengthen the capacity and expand the reach of the labour inspectorate to better monitor children working in the informal economy.

The Committee notes from the Government’s report under Convention No. 182 that according to the inspections carried out by the Procurator’s Office in 2012 in Maktaaral District in South Kazakhstan, 39 cases of child labour were detected in cotton plantations, eight cases of child labour in the tobacco plantations in the Karatal district, while two cases of child labour were detected in car wash services in Uralsk district. In all these cases, a total of 16 people were held administratively liable for violations of the provisions of the Labour Code. The Committee encourages the Government to continue taking measures to monitor child labour in the informal economy. It requests the Government to continue providing information on the number of violations detected with regard to child labour in the informal economy.