Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) recently launched the report of the Child Activity Survey 2016 conducted in assistance with the International Labor Organization (ILO). The previous such surveys were conducted in 1999 and 2008/09.

The data collected in the CAS-2016 includes demographic characteristics, school attendance, economic activities, health and safety, housing, household characteristics and perception of parents/guardians on working children, and other characteristics pertaining to the children aged 5-17 years. According to the survey, the total number of children in the age group of 5-17 years in Sri Lanka in 2016 is estimated as 4.6 million.

The survey estimates that 90.1 percent of the children were attending school during the survey period. Among the children not-attending school, majority (84.2%) are in the 15-17 year age group and about half of them are awaiting G.C.E (O/L) results. A small 6.8 percent have not yet enrolled due to being below the age of 5 years by January.

Only about 2.3 percent of children aged 5-17 years are engaged in some kind of economic activity (working). This is a decline of 10.6 percentage points from the 12.9% reported in 2008/09. Child labor and hazardous form of child labor are subsets of working children and are defined considering national legislations and guidelines of ILO. Child labor refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful. The total child labor is only 1% of total child population and hazardous form of child labor is as low as 0.9%.

Many other related statistics on working children, child labor, hazardous form of child labor, health conditions of working children, parents’ perception of child’s working condition, living conditions of children are available in the report and it has been published in the DCS website www.statistics.gov.lk.