Working around it

One big change that's being enforced in the cities is the ban on child labor. You cannot hire kids anymore - for lifting bricks, for cleaning your cars or even for household chores. The police, I guess got a lot of pressure from the government which in turn must be responding to pressure from activist groups. This has led to a huge shortage of labor. Housewives like my mother struggled to find a good maid to help around the house and poaching the maids is now becoming an issue. As of now, we're lucky that my mom has a good reliable person helping around the house.

Our office is another story. The staff here includes some people to clean the floors and some to hand out cups of coffee/tea a few times a day. This one guy in particular looked no older than 12. I was shocked that the office was hiring him and exposing itself to big trouble from the cops. So I asked him one day how old he was. He said he was 21. I was surprised because he didn't look that old. He said that he was married and even had a kid. Oh well, I thought, maybe he just looks young. Then in our new office we met another guy who was definitely no older than 12. This one smiled when he tried to tell us that he was 18. And that's when I heard the full story from a colleague here. These boys are sent to the cities for work. Especially in nice offices like ours where the pay is good. They're told to tell everyone that they're 18 or older and they probably even have fake birth certificates to show that.

Now I'm not one of those that is entirely opposed to Child Labor, so I am not entirely outraged at this. But I was amused at this neat little work around. Sort of the opposite of "But officer, she said she was 18...."