Eight-year-old Thai boy as breadwinner
"Sanook" has published a beautiful and touching story about the only eight-year-old, but brave "Tong", who is the main breadwinner for his family.
Jatuphat Chichang – or Tong – attends school in Ranut district of Songkhla province and is in class P2. He often gets up at 5 a.m. to sell vegetables grown by his grandmother. He then goes with a cartload of vegetables loaded on a rickety old tricycle to the market nearby. He sells the vegetables for 10 Baht per bag and that sometimes earns him 100 Baht per day. Sometimes he also sells after school or on weekends to collect as much money as possible to help his family.
Tong lives with his grandmother Wannee, 54, who took care of him from his real mother, who had abandoned him when he was eight months old. The father in question also left with the northern sun. Wannee also takes care of Tong's bedridden great-grandmother, 94, and an ailing great-grandfather, aged 87.
Tong said bravely: “I am not tired, I still have to help grandma and those old people, I will study hard and see what the future brings”.
Sanook goes on to suggest helping this family. If you feel the need to do something for Tong and his old housemates, you can contact Wannee on 080-5467266. You can also directly transfer a (small) gecrag to the bank account in the name of Wannee at Krung Thai bank, Ranod branch, the account number is 983 – 0 -77469-4.
Source: Thaivisa/Sanook
Firstly, I hope that so much can be done for the family in question so that Tong no longer has to work, he can successfully complete his schooling and possibly continue his studies in the future so that it can be assured that there is no poverty in the family, another side of the story is that many people are starting to write about child labor again, but far back in the day it was the same in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe, a lot of why because everyone was poor, unfortunately there is still a large part of our world where people are poor and children have no other choice.
If we want this to be more necessary to allow children to work outside school hours, we will have to ensure that these people get more prosperity.
Partly agree with you Gerard, but the main cause is surely that the mother and father have abandoned the child. Something I have seen more often in Thailand – also in my immediate vicinity. How disgusting!
I wonder where the help from the government is.
It is not the case that Thailand has an extensive assistance scheme, but there are still agencies that can mean something.
Here in the village, for example, are a few old people, who have shelter from the tessaban, on a piece of government land, for example.
There is also a government agency for helping children, so a kind of child protection.
But I assume that they will soon make themselves heard after the article in Sanook.
I do wonder how happy the child will be if the responsibility he has taken on, and of which he is so proud, is suddenly taken away from him by a government agency.
I hope that those institutions will employ people and not officials with rules and procedures.
I also saw in Ban Kud Kaphun 16 km outside Nakhon Phanom in ISAAN…
a little girl was also left behind by her mother with her grandmother who tried to take care of the child as best she could.
the child was not mute but very unlikely to speak due to that trauma.
a few years later when the girl got older she was picked up by her mother to go with her because she could then help her earn a living.
It's a shame that such people exist...
That happens a lot in Thailand.
By the time the duped kids grow up, Dad or Mom will come and see if they can help make money.
Not so very long ago, children had no rights at all.
Or as many rights as a piece of cattle.
The parents could actually do anything with it.
Giving away, selling, marrying off and no one thought that was unusual or worried about it.