Mui -Tsai For over fifty years our Government has studied
and aimed at abolishing the system of child labour, known as Mui-Tsai, and practised in Hong-Kong and the Federated Malay States, under which girl children of poor parents are handed over, at a money price, into servitude to wealthy families. It is worth noticing that, according to a report to the Permanent Commission of Slavery of the League of Nations, their position is better than that of a domestic servant. But this opinion is not generally accepted ; fifteen years ago Mr. Churchill declared that the system would be abolished within a year, and it is still held to be a scandalous remnant of servitude in a supposedly free Empire. Mere abolition may be neither feasible nor, given the social conditions within which the system functions, beneficial, but it is for the Commission just appointed by the Colonial Secretary to judge the difficul- ties which have hindered abolition for so long. The White Paper containing a report by the Governor of Hong- Kong itself recommends - that Mui-Tsai be transformed into a system of adoption, under an official guardian, with wide powers and able to insist on payment of an economic wage.
Previous page
