Boy of 7 works 98-hour week

Just as you think there's a vague possibility the ethical message is getting through, something like this comes along to depress you:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3049651/Slumdog-7-works-98-hours-a-week-in-a-sweatshop.html

It concerns a boy of seven found working 98 hours a week to produce decorative Christmas goods for the British high street. The photos alone are horrific - the poor kid looks utterly exhausted, and at just seven years old. This is nothing short of child slavery.

The high street store claims they knew nothing about it and will now stop getting goods from this supplier. But that, of course, leaves me wondering about what will happen to the little boy in the story. It's unlikely there will be a happy ending, as he is so vulnerable to exploitation due to grinding poverty.

The sad reality is that, if we want bargains, others will pay. It may be many hundreds of miles away, rather than in the factories on our streets as it was in the times of Dickens, but the reality is no less horrific. Children deserve a childhood, an education and the right to be free from oppression and exploitation, no matter where they happen to live.


(p.s. I wouldn't normally link to something I read in The Sun, but it was in The Sunday Times as well, only I couldn't get to that without subscribing).