The pandemic has played against. The school desertion that left almost two years of school closures moved thousands of children to work. According to the Inegi ‘Survey for the measurement of the COVID-19 impact on education’, 4.3% of the country’s children and adolescents were not enrolled in the 2021-22 cycle. Among the reasons are that the minor began to work and that the additional income makes it less attractive to be in the classroom.
2021 was declared “International Year to Eradicate Child Labour, Challenges and Opportunities”. In a forum held on the matter, in November, Thea Lee, Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs of the Bureau of International Labor Affairs of the United States Department of Labor, stated that, precisely because of the COVID-19 contingency, the rate of child labor in Mexico will grow 5.5%, going from 3.1 million in 2019 to 3.3 million in 2022.
The institution he represents gave 180 million dollars to the Mexican government to support the implementation of the labor reform and combat child labor. Part of the money went to carry out the ‘National Survey of Child Labor’ (ENTI), of the Inegi, in 2019.
In the same forum, Alejandro Encinas Nájera, head of the Labor Policy and Institutional Relations Unit of the Ministry of Labor, added that the Legislative Power made reforms to raise the minimum age for work and prohibited jobs for those under 18 years of age. .
Well, nothing is further from the reality that we have this 2022. The Federal Labor Law (LFT) prohibits the work of minors under 15 years of age and allows the work of adolescents between 15 and 17 years of age who have completed their compulsory basic education and prohibited the work of minors under 18 years of age in activities that put their development and their physical and mental health at risk.
I used the past mode because on April 6, 2022, the Secretary of Labor published in the Official Journal of the Federation the decree that reforms article 176 of the LFT where it announces that now, adolescents between 15 and 17 years old will be able to work in agricultural activities and others that had been prohibited because they were considered dangerous for their age.
Of course, Luisa María Alcalde Luján, in charge of this Secretariat, promised to create a regulation that prioritizes the rights of adolescents.