Iraqi brick workers risk their health and lives to support their families February 21, 2025
- Ana Cunha-Busch
- Feb 20, 2025
- 3 min read
By AFP - Agence France Presse
Iraqi brick workers risk their health and lives to support their families
By Christy-Belle Geha
At dawn in central Iraq, teenage sisters Dalia and Rukaya Ghali were carrying heavy bricks, forced to leave school and do dangerous work to support their family.
Covered in dirt, the sisters worked for hours in the oil brick factory near the town of Al-Kifl, south of Baghdad, earning just enough to keep their younger siblings in school.
“I'm very tired, but what else can we do?” said 17-year-old Dalia, who has had no choice but to work since the age of 10, like one in 20 Iraqi children, according to UN figures.
With her face covered up to just below her eyes to protect her from the dirt and smoke that hung in the air, Dalia said that if she and her 16-year-old sister hadn't been working, “our family wouldn't have been able to survive”.
The province of Babil, where the Ghali family live, is the second poorest in Iraq, according to the authorities. Nationwide, around 17% of the oil-rich country's 45 million inhabitants live in poverty.
Economic hardship has led 5% of Iraqi children to work, according to a UN study carried out in 2018, often in adverse conditions and at risk to their health.
Dalia uses the $80 a week she earns to pay the tuition fees of two of her brothers so that they can escape a similar fate to hers, even though the family needs the money.
Her uncle Atiya Ghali, 43, has been working in brick factories since he was 12.
Despite the hard work and low pay, he said he was willing to work “all his life” in the factory, where he now supervises dozens of workers because he has no other source of income.
The brick factories run on heavy fuel oil, producing high levels of sulphur, a pollutant that causes respiratory diseases.
The factories produce dust that also damages the workers' lungs, with many suffering from skin rashes and constant coughing.
The authorities have asked brick factories to phase out the use of heavy oil and closed 111 factories in the Baghdad area last year “due to emissions” that violate environmental standards.
In addition to the polluted air they breathe, workers face the ever-present threat of work-related injuries.
Sabah Mahdi, 33, said he gets anxious when he goes to work every morning.
“Some have been injured and others have died” at the factory, he said.
One coworker died trapped in a brick-cutting machine, and another was burned, Mahdi said.
Medical sources told AFP that 28 brick workers died in central and southern Iraq in 2024, and another 80 were injured.
Causes included fuel tank explosions and fires, as well as collapsed roofs in old factories, the sources said.
During the winter, workers start their shifts between 2 am and 4 am, but when summer comes, they get up earlier, starting their arduous tasks at midnight to escape the sweltering heat.
Women and children start loading molded clay onto a cart pulled by donkeys, sending it to a group of men who unload the cargo into a dome-shaped kiln.
They then turn on an oil-powered generator, starting the heating process. For four days, smoke billows out of the kiln's chimney until the bricks turn yellow.
Every summer, many workers, like Atiya Ghali, move with their families to small mud rooms inside the factory to avoid prolonged power cuts and water shortages at home.
“Our salaries aren't enough, and the authorities don't support us,” said Ghali, whose wife Tahrir, 35, often works with him.
Despite the many difficulties, the workers asked the authorities not to close the factories for fear of being left without an income.
Instead, many asked to be included in social security schemes and for better working conditions.
Hamza Saghir, 30, said his doctor advised him to find a new job “away from the dust and heat” to overcome a persistent cough he has had for years.
He dreams of becoming a cab driver and “building a house” for his family of 15, but the meager salary he earns is far from enough to save up to buy a car or a house.
“I can't read or write,” said Saghir. “I can't leave work.”
Tahrir Ghali said he wouldn't let his six children work in the factory like his cousins do.
“I want them to become doctors,” she said before shouting at a group of child workers nearby who had taken a short break to play.
cbg/rh/ami/tym
Comments