Photo essay: Myanmar boy earns less than 4 cents for each basket of gravel he hauls

In this June 10, 2014 photo, Chit Toke takes a break from hauling gravel baskets in Yangon, Myanmar. Early every morning, 11-year-old Chit Tokes walks over to the riverside where boats and barges are docked. He joins the queue of workers, seeking to earn enough to help feed his family by hauling baskets of stones, each weighing more than 19 kilograms (42 pounds), from boat to shore. If he can haul that basket 100 times each day over a 30-meter (100-foot) path, he can earn 3,500 kyats ($3.70). (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) (The Associated Press)

prev next

In this June 10, 2014 photo, a teenager lifts a basket of gravel, weighing about 19 kilograms (42 pounds) in a barge anchored in the banks of Yangon River, Myanmar. He receives 35 kyats ($0.037) for hauling a basket full of gravel from a boat to shore, walking a distance of about 30 meters (100 feet) on a narrow timber beam. 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 7 to 16 work, according to the United Nations. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) (The Associated Press)

In this June 10, 2014 photo, a man strains with the weight of a basket of gravel, weighing about 19 kilograms (42 pounds) in a barge anchored in the banks of Yangon River, Myanmar. Day labors seek to earn enough to help feed their families by hauling baskets full of stones from boat to shore. Hauling a basket 100 times each day over a 30-meter (100-foot) path, a worker can earn 3,500 kyats ($3.70), in the country that tries to rebuild its economy after five decades of military misrule.(AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) (The Associated Press)

YANGON, 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, Myanmar's biggest city and commercial capital.

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 19 kilograms (42 pounds), from boat to shore. If he can haul that basket 100 times each day over a 30-meter (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 7 to 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," 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 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 8-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."

Follow AP Photographer Gemunu Amarasinghe on Twitter at www.twitter.com/gemunua