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NEW CHILD LABOUR REGULATIONS CHALLENGED
An order fixing 14 years as the minimum age of employment in light work has provoked an emotional response among the Portuguese population and angered the trade unions.
Child labour is the subject of a long-standing controversy in Portugal. The number of child workers is somewhere between 15,000, according to government sources, and 40,000 to 50.000, according to the trade unions. Most of them are concentrated in the north of the country where large numbers of small family enterprises, often home-based, employ them in textile and footwear manufacturing, catering and the hotel business. The Government has been conducting a campaign against child labour under the slogan "Give them time to grow up". It was against this background that the Ministry of Employment and Social Security published two new orders in the Official Gazette on 3 August.
The first order -- the one which is being challenged by the trade unions -- lowers...