I was surprised that a SAEMAPE official admitted to the existence of child labor at a formal mining site, especially since most government employees that I met took great pains to deny or diminish the existence of child labor in artisanal mining. One senior parliamentarian in Kinshasa once told me that the international community was mistaken about the issue of child labor at artisanal mines in the Congo. According to him, they were actually Pygmies.
