One advantage of late night sleeplessness is listening to the BBC World Service. This evening’s World Service edition of From Our Own Correspondent included a report about child miners in southern Kyrgyzstan:

No one knows the exact number of children working in Kyrgyzstan’s coal mines.

Locals say the government refuses to acknowledge the problem. Officially these children may not even exist. Yet we saw them at every coal mine we visited

writes BBC correspondent Natalia Antelava in her report, the text of which is available here. It is also available as a podcast (more information here) or you can listen to it online (valid for the next seven days - link on right of page).

Unsurprisingly, the report makes for disquieting reading, with accounts of accidents, deaths and wages of just $2 or $3 per day.

Perhaps the one arguably upbeat note in the report is that local people are beginning to look for viable solutions themselves, aware that the potential government solution - closing the mines down - will do nothing to improve their situation:

Nurjamal Mambetova, who has set up a local non-profit organisation and has been trying to come up with a solution to the problem, says she fears that drawing the government’s attention to the issue could only make things worse.

“We worry that they will close down the mines, or blow them up, and that won’t solve the problem. People will just start going back to them and digging again because they have no other way to survive,” she says.

“What we need are alternatives, other jobs, or proper conditions at the mines. Something, just not this,” Nurjamal says.