The condition of workers under the age of 18 in Gaziantep Sahinbey Auto İndustrial Zone

Child labor is a serious public health problem for both developed and developing countries. This study was a cross sectional-descriptive study conducted for determining the sociodemographic characteristics, working conditions, general health conditions, habits, substance usange of child labouring and whether they were exposed to violence or not. It was decided to get all population of child labouring in Gaziantep Şahinbey Auto Industrial Zone, however 58.2 % accepted to take part in the study (n=418). The data were collected by a quastionaire applied face-to-face interviews and children's height and weight were measured. The data was evaluated with the package program SPSS 22. Descriptive statistics and chisquare test were used. Significance was p<0.05. According to the study results all of the participant were male and the average age was 14.90±1.94. Their mean age at start of work was 11.75±2.49. Of the childeren, 34.9 % were not attending to school. Among the children, frequency of underweight, stunting, overweight and obesity was 2.8 %, 9.8 %, 17.7 % and 6.5 % respectively. Parental education level was low. Education levels of fathers were higher than those of the mothers. Most of the mothers were housewifes, had no income and, 16.5 % of the families were immigrants. The mean number of person in the family was 5.87±1.62. Of the participitans, 29.4 % were smoking, 8.4 % were consumpting alcohol and 3.8 % were using substance. Of the children, 55.0 % declaired that they have started working for learning a job and 35.4 % for financial problems. Children were mostly working as mechanic (38.0 %).The mean working time was 11.46±0.83 hours/day. The average of the weekly wages of child labors was 56.66±24.64 Turkish lira. Work place satisfaction was 95.7 %. Of the children, 5.7 % were attending apprenticeship school, 52.6 % experienced occupational accidents and 88.8 % were exposed to one or more than one type of the violence. Consequently, child labor continues despite all compaigns and the measures against child labour. More radical solutions should be developed and cooperation should be established among sectors; and a common stance and political determination should be displayed for the solution of the problem.