The smallest stand on wooden boxes, their arms cut where their scissors have missed the wool. A seamstress beats time with a stick like a metronome, rapping knuckles when attention slips. Thanks to its children, Morocco pro- duces about 750,000 square metres of carpet a year. The bargain prices attract the tourists, who provide Morocco s major source of hard currency. But child labour is not just for the benefit of tourists.
Grocers hire children to man their cubby-holes through the night.
And the number of child- maids is estimated at up to 1m. Abuse is rampant, murder occasional. But the government resists regu- lation for fear of revealing the extent of its child workforce to the International Labour Organisation. Morocco made education compulsory in 1963. But 40 years on, the Ministry of Edu- cation admits that 2.5m children are out of school.