Iraqi brick workers risk health long-term
Baghdad – As dawn broke over central Iraq, teenage sisters Dalia and Rukaya Ghali were loading heavy bricks, forced out of school and into a hazardous job to support their family.
Covered in dirt, the sisters toiled for hours at the oil-fired brickworks near Al-Kifl city south of Baghdad, earning just enough to keep their younger siblings at school.
'I'm very tired, but what else can we do?' said 17-year-old Dalia, left with little choice but to work since she was 10, like about one in every 20 Iraqi children according to UN figures.
Her face concealed up to just below her eyes to protect her from the dirt and smoke that hung heavily in the air, Dalia said that if she and her 16-year-old sister had not been working, 'our family wouldn't have been able to survive.'
Babil province, where the Ghali family live, is Iraq's second poorest, according to the authorities. Nationwide, nearly 17 percent of the oil-rich country's 45 million people live in poverty.
Economic hardship has pushed five percent of Iraq's children into labour, a UN study found in 2018, often in harsh conditions and at a risk to their health.
Dalia uses the $80 a week she earns to cover tuition for two of her siblings, so they can escape a fate similar to hers even though the family needs the money.
Her uncle Atiya Ghali, 43, has been working at brick factories since he was 12.
Despite the hard labour and the low pay, he said he was willing to work his 'entire life' at the factory, where he now supervises dozens of labourers, as he has no other source of income.
Brickworks run on heavy fuel oil, producing high level of sulphur, a pollutant that causes respiratory illness.
The factories produce dust that also harms workers' lungs, with many suffering from rashes and constant coughing.
Authorities have asked brickworks to phase out their use of heavy oil, and closed 111 factories in the Baghdad area last year 'due to emissions' that breach environmental standards.
Adding to the polluted air that they breathe, labourers face the ever-present threat of work-related injury.
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Sabah Mahdi, 33, said he is anxious when he goes to work every morning.
'Some have been injured and others have died' at the factory, he said.
One co-worker was killed trapped in a brick-cutting machine, and another was burnt, said Mahdi.
Medical sources told AFP that 28 brick workers died in central and southern Iraq in 2024, and another 80 were injured.
The causes included fuel tank explosions and fires, as well as ceilings that collapsed in old factories, the sources said.
During winter, workers begin their shifts between 2:00 am and 4:00 am, but when summer hits, they rise earlier, starting their arduous tasks at midnight to escape the searing heat.
Women and children start by loading moulded clay onto a donkey-pulled cart, sending it to a group of men who unload the cargo into a dome-shaped oven.
They then start an oil-powered generator, initiating the heating process. For four days, smoke billows from the oven's chimney until the bricks turn yellow.
Every summer, many workers like Atiya Ghali move with their families into small clay rooms inside the factory to avoid prolonged power cuts and water shortages at home.
'Our salaries are not enough and the authorities don't support us,' said Ghali, whose wife Tahrir, 35, often works with him.
Despite the many hardships, workers have urged authorities not to close down factories for fear that they would be left without income.
Many have asked instead to be included in social security schemes and for better working conditions.
Hamza Saghir, 30, said his doctor had advised him to find a new job 'away from dust and heat' to overcome a relentless cough he has had for years.
He dreams of becoming a cab driver and 'building a house' for his family of 15, but the meagre pay he earns is far from enough to save up for a car or a home.
'I can't read or write,' said Saghir. 'I can't leave work.'
Tahrir Ghali said she would not let her six children work at the factory like their 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 joke around.
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