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On the cover
Unchaining hearts & dreams!
The issue of child labour continues to be a controversial one because due to extreme poverty many young children are forced to work to stay alive. But, what these children need is a practical alternative that is not fuelled by high emotion and thoughtless rhetoric... writes Mehrin Lubna
Photo by GMB Akash
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‘My husband is unemployed for almost a year now; at first we borrowed money to buy food for our children, hoping that it wouldn’t be long till my husband gets a job but as weeks passed, people stopped lending us and instead started pressurising us to pay up what we had borrowed,’ said Maksuda Akhter and continued, ‘we would have starved to death if Mr. Aminur Ahmed hadn’t been kind enough to hire my son Sumon in his balloon factory as a labourer.’ Sumon, a 10 year old, works 14 hours a day at Saimon Balloon Factory and earns a measly amount of TK110 every week. ‘I know that my son should be studying at this age rather than working to support his family. However, if his father had a job then I wouldn’t have sent him to work,’ she said.
Thousands of children in Bangladesh are forced into labour in order to sustain their family and in the process miss the chance to go to school and it’s believed that lack of job opportunities for adults is doubling up the number of child labourers throughout Bangladesh; consequently, small factories and workshops mushrooming along the alleys of Dhaka City, employ children as labourers. ‘I do want to go to school and learn how to read and write, but then, who will look after my family? Who would earn for my parents if I went to school?’ retorted Md. Ekhlas, another 10-year-old working at an aluminium factory in Dhaka.
According to the National Child Labour Survey conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, between 2002 and 2003 there are approximately 42.8 million children aged between 5-17 in Bangladesh of which 7.4 million are engaged in some sort of economic activity. On the other hand, 3.2 million children are directly selling their labour to earn a living and of them, 1.3 million children are engaged in the worst form of child labour that leads to adverse effects on the child’s safety, physical or mental health and moral development. Children engaged in hazardous work are said to face inhuman working conditions and most of them are compelled to work 12-14 hours a day, earning no more than TK15 -TK20 a day. According to the National Child Labour Survey 2002-03 conducted by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), majority of child labourers are said to earn nothing at all; worse still they are compelled to work year after year as unpaid apprentices. ‘The earlier children can learn their work the earlier they become paid employees,’ said M.A Zinnah of Tanvir Automobile. ‘Usually, none of the children are paid in their first year,’ he added casually.
A research report by State of Child Labour 2001, Bangladesh Shishu Adhikar Forum and UNICEF identified some 430 forms of child labour and among them 67 are identified as hazardous. The report labelled seven sectors, including, leather factories, chemical factories, welding workshops, match factory, domestic help as excessively hazardous for children.
Needless to state that, the nature of the work that the child labourers perform are said to be dangerous even for adults. ‘Working at workshops is dangerous for both adults and children and accidents may happen anytime due to lack of concentration,’ stated M.A Zinnah of Tanvir Automobile with a shrug as if it’s not a big deal.
In this context, we must mention the prevailing socio-economic and political situation in the country which has created a high degree of insecurity and understandably, parents feeling unsafe to keep their children at home send them to work ‘If they are working at some place, there won’t be any risk of them getting into a fight or an accident at home; moreover, a substantial amount of money would be earned in the process,’ said Salma Akhter a working mother of two.
While the prime reason for letting children work is a contribution to family income, other reasons are inability to bear educational expenses, poor performance in schools, payment of family loans or complete unwillingness to attend school.
‘I attended school for some months, but the lessons always bored me. So, my parents made me join a welding factory instead,’ said Faruk, another child labourer.
Sources from International Programme on Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) a project of ILO pointed out that, employers running small factories are usually seen to employ more children for cheap labour and although a bilateral agreement has been signed among various unions and employers, the number of child labourers has not gone down.
Important to note that the Employment of Children Act, 1938 also emphasises on regulating the employment of children in specified industries and occupations and provides punishment for the contravention of the Act.
‘If we don’t provide them with a job, they would starve at home and I personally don’t think that any employer is committing a heinous crime by signing up children as labourers,’ commented Mamunur Rashid, manager of a Bangle industry.’ We are considered as criminals but I think we are better than the people who made the laws prohibiting children from earning a living. Because, when you are concerned about child rights there must be some initiative on your part to provide them with a helping hand.’
The government as well as different NGOs is working together to resist child labour and Bangladesh ratified ILO’s Convention No.182 promising to fight and eradicate all the worst forms of child labour in the country; and as part of the government’s commitment in ratifying the convention 182, ILO-IPEC launched a project aimed at eliminating and preventing the Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL).
Since its inception, the Dutch funded project, under the co-ordination of Ronald .E. Burghuys, the Chief Technical Advisor, had been implementing a comprehensive package of strategies, models and programs that ensure a significant reduction in the worst forms of child labour in a systematic manner.
One of the project’s strategies has been the establishment of 85 Multi-Purpose Centres (MPCs) and another involves the establishment of vocational training centres throughout Dhaka City, which also includes micro credit support for guardians or parents. In addition, Dhaka Ahsania Mission has been providing non-formal education at the MPCs to children involved in hazardous work. The aim is to prepare them to join the mainstream education system after they are through with the one-year free education provided by the MPCs and with the help of certain influential people each of these centres tries to enrol as many children as possible from various workshops and factories from within the nearby areas. ‘It might sound like a hard job, but it’s really not, so far very few employers have denied cooperation,’ said Shahnaz Parveen Razvee a social mobilizer of Ahsania Mission, Mohammadpur branch. ‘The trick is to be diplomatic and make the employers see the benefit that they would be getting if their child employees got a little bit of education from our centres’ she added.
The introduction of vocational courses has added a benefit for older children aged 13-14 who cannot proceed to formal education. Instead, they are trained for non-hazardous vocations by the Under-Privileged Children’s Educational programme (UCEP). ‘After each course, which usually lasts for eight months to a year, trainees are helped in finding good employment,’ informed Aftab Uddin Ahmed Brig. Gen. (Retd) Director General of UCEP.
‘Soon, a subsequent phase will be introduced by the ILO-IPEC, titled Time Bound Program (TBP) which would basically be an integrated approach for implementing the ILO Convention no.182,’ informed Mr Berghuys (CTA). ‘So far Bangladesh has begun the process of formulating the TBP frameworks,’ he added.
Child labour is a pervasive problem not only in Bangladesh but also throughout the world, especially in the developing countries. As much as anyone would like to believe that things like that aren’t happening, the sad truth is that millions of children throughout Bangladesh work daily, under nightmarish conditions, just to stay alive. Despite such appalling circumstances, child labourers like Sabur still don’t give up on their dreams but hope to attend school someday just like any other children.
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