Translated by Tammy Nolan
Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua - There is not enough space in nurseries or child-care centers for the children of the 80 thousand female workers of assembly plant companies in Cuidad Juárez, leading siblings as young as seven years old to be responsible for their care, with all the dangers that this represents, stated the non-governmental organization (NGO) Network for Children.
The agency states that 165 thousand minors under age six live in Juárez--15 percent of the population--, for whom there is no public policy oriented either to satisfying their basic needs or to making sure that their basic human rights are being met.
The Network revealed that it has formed The Childrens Committee, which brings together twelve NGOs, and indicated
“only six of each 100 children under four years old are received in childcare spaces. For this reason, and because of the violence taking place in Ciudad Juárez, children under six have witnessed homicides, and in many cases, show the psychological damage that this causes.”The Network argued,
“the majority of the 80 thousand workers presently in the assembly plants are of child-bearing age and in the 29 day-care centers in Ciudad Juárez only 7 thousand children are cared for. Apart from that, the existing day-care centers are far from the work centers, making it impossible for workers to get there, due to the high cost of transportation.”It was added that
“these women face serious problems, one of them being sleeping only four and a half hours. Therefore we demand that the authorities invest around 100 million extra pesos [US$8,281,000] yearly for these kinds of centers in Juárez, so that the number of children attended to in Juárez will be equal to that of Chihuahua City, which has more day-care centers, despite the fact that it has only half the population and a much smaller female work force”.Spanish original