Children working for 100 denars

Miners on the age 7-8 years, are working for 100 denars per hour, and are working for 11 hours in the vineyards in Tikves. The thirteen year old K. V. from Strumica instead of pencil and notebook, for almost a month is holding a knife in his hands cutting of grapes in the vineyards in Kavadarci.

This knife is sharp and it is cutting the grapes pretty well. I can not get hurt because I got used to holding it. It is much better for me in school but I had to work, because I want new clothes. This not the first time for me to cut grapes. I was working last year also. When the work here is done I will go back to school. I know I messed some classes, but I hope that the teachers will understand. I do not have the time to talk now, I must cut these grapes – said the young worker and entered in the lines of the vineyard.

With his parents and four brothers and a sister came to work in the vineyards in Kavadarci three weeks ago. He only saw his classroom and his classmates in the fourth grade on the 1st of September. Since then he is cutting grape, filling the ten kilos wooden boxes for fruit and helps to get them to the trucks. He is not getting any settlement for his work because he is a child and he is not registered as a worker. He works on his parent’s request. They take his daily wage from 100 denars. But he is hoping that after the harvest he will get his money and that he will be paid enough to buy a new blouse, jeans and shoes. K. V. shoulder to shoulder works with sixty more other workers from Stip and Strumica. Among them there are children who are only 4 years old. There are also children six, seven eights years old. The adult ones are at the age 18 to 75. They are all socially endangered and live out of monthly social assistance from 2000 denars. K. V. each morning gets up at six o’clock, and comes back at 17:00 o’clock in the afternoon. He eats and sleeps with the entire group, which is staying in a abandoned barn, 500 meters from the vineyard where he works. He shares his meals with his parents, and sleeps on the floor of the barn with the other children. While K. V. was cutting grapes all the time, Sebastian Mustafovski (33) from Stip, who works in that same group, stood aside and was watching his son, the seven year old A. M. trying to reach the grapes on the higher branches. Sebastian was resting and was telling us about his life. A. M. is in the first grade in the elementary school “Vanco Prke” in Stip, but he is not going to school his father can not afford to buy him school books. A. M. is working in the vineyard on request of his father.

I have to steal to buy him books. In this way I am working honestly. The child had to come here because there is no one in Stip to watch over him. And because he is already here he might as well do some work. I explained to his teachers. They pressured me not to take him out of school, but I told them that they have no other choice but to let him go. I will go to jail if necessary, but the most important thing is to make some money to provide him food. When we go back home I might mot let him to go back to school – says Mustafovski

He says that not even the employers can prevent the children to cut the grapes.

The employers know that we come here with our children. But they are no registered as workers, only we are. They sign working contracts with us because in tat way they calculate how much food they need to prepare for us. Then we share the meals with our children – explaines Mustafovski.

He is not yet thinking what he will do when he goes back to Stip. With his four member family he is living on social assistance. He calculated that this work will pay him about 12.000 denars.

With one part of the money I will pay off my debts. With the rest of the money I will buy paprika for ajvar (food prepared from paprika, a kind of Macedonian traditional food) and some fire wood. I can tell whether some money will remain to buy something for the children – says Sebastian

His group collects 150 wooden fruit boxes per day. For one box they get 10 denars. As soon as they finish working in one field they move to another. This month they have been to at least 30 locations. They are going back home in a few days. K. V. wants to go back to school, Mustafovski is planning to go from one house to another in Stip and to ask if someone needs to get his wood cut for the winter.

Publiched in daily newspaper dnevnik by Ljubica Grozdanovska on 28 September 2006