Over 1.5 mln underage Brazilians in hazardous work: report

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 2 (Xinhua) -- Over 1.5 million minors work in hazardous conditions in Brazil, national paper O Globo said Sunday.

Some 1.56 million to 1.97 million Brazilians aged under 18 work in hazardous jobs, according to a national study on households conducted by the government. Brazil has a total of 3.7 million working minors.

A number of children even work in slaughterhouses and cemeteries, according to a study by non-governmental organization Brasil Reporter.

To eradicate child labor, Brazil has implemented a program offering subsidies to households below the poverty line. "That's not enough," said Lelio Bentes, minister of Brazil's Supreme Court of Labor and coordinator of the Justice of Labor's Committee to Eradicate Child Labor.

Official figures show that child labor ratio has been down to 8.3 percent in 2011 from 19.6 percent in 1992, though a large number of Brazilian children aged from five to 17 continue to be exploited.

Experts are not optimistic about the government's plan to eradicate child labor by 2015. "We will not be able to meet that goal," said Bentes,

Bentes noted that most counter-measures are in family farms to end domestic child labor, stressing the need for "new strategies".

There are some 215 million child laborers worldwide, half of whom on hazardous or illegal jobs, according to the International Labor Organization. The agency has called for eradication of child labor around the world by 2016.

An international conference on children will be held in the capital Brasilia in October.

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