TEHRAN – If approved by prosecutor general, parents will lose custody of working children who are regularly seen working, said the Welfare Organization’s deputy director for social affairs, Nasimonline reported on Friday.

Most working children are forced to do jobs by their family or third parties, highlighted Habibollah Masoudi Farid, adding that not a penny of children’s income is given to themselves.

He went on to say that some families who deal with drug addiction or financial problems may sell or rent their children to others as well.

Touching upon the growing presence of non-Iranian laboring children during past 13 years, Masoudi Farid noted that based on recent estimation, some 70 percent of working children in Tehran and near 50 percent of all laboring children in Iran are foreign nationals.

Any kind of work that harms children, deprives them from their childhood or interferes with their school attendance is considered child labor. Once too common all around the world, child labor is now generally believed to be wrong by different societies and appropriate measures are continuously taken to fight the issue. However, there are still hundreds of thousand innocent children out there doing hazardous jobs and gaining a minimum income which is usually not for themselves.

MAH/MQ/MG