Into the limestone blizzard
Egyptian quarry workers face backbreaking, dangerous work for the promise of $7 a day
(AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)The workers sink into the pits, chipping away at stones that will later be used by construction, pharmaceutical, or ceramic companies. For their efforts, these day laborers — many of them children as young as 10 — will take home somewhere between $7 and $13.The work can be dangerous; the equipment used has electrocuted some laborers, and cost others limbs. A spokesman for a charity focused on helping child laborers told The Associated Press that in 2009, there were 18 quarry deaths at one site alone.A 15-year-old boy named Baskharoon Mounir lost his left arm to a cutting machine — in the month he'd worked at a quarry, he had been given no safety equipment nor spent any time training with the machines. But for some, having a life-threatening job is better than no job at all."I wish I could go back, even with one arm," Mounir said. "It would be better than staying at home."
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