FEZ, Morocco -- A group of tourists wanders through the narrow streets of the Moroccan city of Fez, marveling at the age-old production techniques of its craftsmen.

But a few steps off the beaten track, in hole-in-the-wall workshops and ramshackle basements, adolescents and children work with urgency and concentration.

This is an area of low wages. In these under-regulated workshops you either keep up the pace or go hungry.

Many young workers are from families that have migrated to the city, fleeing lower incomes in the countryside. Some are as young as seven, earning around 60 dirhams (six dollars) for a six-day week, Reuters reported.

These youngsters have now been targeted in a drive by the United Nations children's agency UNICEF with the Moroccan authorities to persuade artisans to stop hiring children under 12 and release those already employed for a few hours of schooling each week.

Officials also attempt to win over the hearts and minds of parents, visiting them at home.

Under legislation passed in 2000, all Moroccan children under 15 should be in school. In 1993 Morocco ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says children should be protected from economic exploitation.

But there are no plans at present for a strict clampdown on child labor.

Officials justified this softly-softly approach by pointing to the harsh realities of a country of 30 million in which 20 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty.

"We remind the artisans of the terms of the UN convention," said Laamoumri el Ghali, an official with the Handicrafts Ministry in Fez. "But if we strictly enforced the law, many workshops would have to close and we would have a lot of unemployed artisans."

Families dependent on child labor, it is argued, would fall into extreme poverty if it were abolished overnight.

Just 234 of the thousands of children working in the Fez craft sector were enrolled this year in the classes coordinated by UNICEF. Attendance is sometimes patchy, with employers pleading full order-books. When they do turn up for classes, some of the children are too exhausted to concentrate.

There has been little pressure as yet from political parties, trade unions, or wider public opinion for any stricter stance on child labor. A rare press comment on November 1 called for those employing children to be penalized.

"It's time to move on to action," wrote the Fez correspondent of ******Aujourd'hui le Maroc***** newspaper, noting that neither awareness-raising days nor official measures had stopped the exploitation.