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Nausea, headaches and dizzy spells: just a few of the symptoms commonly experienced by children like 13-year-old Siti Maryam who work on Indonesia's tobacco farms. Maryam is among the thousands of children rights groups say work in hazardous conditions on farms in the world's fifth-biggest producer of tobacco. She works, with her bare hands, on a family-owned farm near the east Java city of Probolinggo, and regularly suffers from symptoms health experts call "Green Tobacco Sickness", an acute nicotine poisoning which could turn chronic. During the planting season, from June to the end of August, roughly a dozen children work on the tobacco field alongside Maryam in Kedung Rejoso village. Waradatul Yaumi is one of them; "I work here just to help my parents and help to meet our needs," she said. Children, like Maryam and Yaumi, across Indonesia are involved in planting, applying pesticides, harvesting, bundling and drying tobacco leaves. "I felt nauseous when I used the spraying tank and handled pesticides for the first time last year. I was feeling nauseous because I wasn't wearing a mask," said one 16-year-old boy in Sampang. The tobacco is then sold to firms who never question the processes behind production. "When I send to the storehouse, it only depends on the quality of tobacco I send them," said local trader Suradi, adding that he could not name the Indonesian and international companies he sold to. "They don't ask if I employ children." Hiring children under 15 years of age in Indonesia is illegal. If a child is under 18, it is illegal for them to work in a "hazardous environment". Many in the tobacco industry are not directly hired by traders or companies; they often skip school, or drop out altogether, in order to help their families make a living, rights groups say. The children sowing seeds in Probolinggo said they were being paid about 10,000 rupiah to 15,000 rupiah ($0.73 to $1.10) for seven hours of work a day. Indonesia is one of the world's fastest-growing markets for tobacco products, with about $16 billion of cigarettes sold last year in the country of 250 million, an increase of 13 percent from 2014, says market research firm Euromonitor International. But a lack of information leaves families oblivious to the hazards their children face while working on tobacco farms, said Margaret Wurth, a researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch. In a report issued on Wednesday (May 25), the group said it interviewed 227 people, among them 132 children aged between 8 and 17, who said they worked on tobacco farms in four Indonesian provinces. Several big companies lack procedures to screen out tobacco that involved hazardous conditions, the group said. But the report risks generalising the whole of Indonesia and some children do work in non-hazardous conditions on tobacco farms, the chairman of the Indonesian tobacco farmers' association, Soeseno, told Reuters by telephone. Parents getting their children to help is in line with cultural norms in some areas, he said. Human Rights Watch said it had reached out to some of the biggest companies operating in Indonesia, such as Philip Morris International Inc, Djarum Group and PT Gudang Garam Tbk. Philip Morris welcomed the report, sustainability officer Miguel Coleta told Reuters. "So the critical step we have taken in Indonesia is to move away from the so-called open market, and today we're sourcing already 70 percent of our volumes through direct contracts with farmers," he said during an interview in London, up from about 10 percent four years ago. But change requires the cooperation of many stakeholders, including the Indonesian government, he added. Indonesian tobacco firms Djarum and Gudang Garam did not respond to requests from Reuters seeking comment. The government, which is currently running a program called "Our Ideal Family" to help alleviate families from poverty which will in turn help stop children from being sent to work, says it is working on the issue. "Any person who employs a child, which is prohibited by law, including in the tobacco industry which has a wide impact on public health, should be punished because it is a criminal offense," said Arist Medeka Siarait, the head of Indonesia's Child Protection Agency. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that over 1.5 million children are working in Indonesia's agricultural sector, mainly in tobacco, rubber and palm oil plantations. Indonesia is one of just a few countries that has not signed or ratified the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a global public health treaty aimed at protecting the population from the consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke, Human Rights Watch said.