The capital of Cotopaxi, Latacunga, is a small city: only about 64,000 people live within city limits. But in t,hat town, authorities estimate there are about 1,300 child laborers.

They do the same work and work the same hours that adults do, but they are younger than 15 (the age at which teens can leave school to enter the workforce, according to the law).

Children 14 and under still work selling candy, picking garbage, or making bricks. 

“It’s complicated to control, even though we carry out operations all the time,” says Paola Bedón, executive secretary of the regional Council of Childhood and Adolescence.

Bedón says the children on the streets selling candy or begging are organized by “mafias” that profit off the child’s work.

She says this information is not confirmed, but is under investigation by the Ministry of Social Inclusion (MIES) and the Dinapen (a police force that is specialized in dealing with cases involving children).

She says besides the alleged mafias, the children who work often come from abusive homes, and are forced to work by their parents, “young and healthy moms who don’t want to work.”

Gustavo Recaldo, from the MIES, says that 80 percent of the kids working in dangerous workplaces like the garbage dump or the brick factories are migrants from the countryside. Their families come to the city from the rural parishes in nearby Pujilí.

Getting those children to stop working means cutting off a vital income their families rely on. Even when the children are removed from the work and placed in schools, he says, a few days later they are back at the factory or the garbage dump, picking for recyclables.

Underage kids can also be found working the fruit and vegetable stands in the markets and plazas of the city.

Original story