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| Child
labour : trends and features |
| By:
Mohammad Zulfiquer Hossain |
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Trends in child labour situation in Bangladesh
: |
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| The
number of child workers in the country increased
from 2.5 million in 1974 to 6.6 million in 1995-96.
In 1983-84 urban child labour force accounted
for only 9 percent of the total child labour
force, but this figure rose to 17 percent in
1995-96. Child labour participation rate remains
stable at around 19 percent since 1989. |
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| Selected
Issues on child labour in Bangladesh: |
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| Hazardous
child labour: Any comprehensive program,
designed to eliminate child labour, should address
on a priority basis the most intolerable forms
of child labour. In 1995 the Ministry of Labour
and Manpower in collaboration with UNICEF undertook
a study, entitled "Hazardous Child Labour in
Bangladesh" to identify the hazardous economic
activities involving children. This study identified
the following 27 economic activities as hazardous: |
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| 1.
Automobile workshop worker 2. Battery recharging
shop worker 3. Bedding manufacturing worker
4. Blacksmith 5. Brick/stone crushing 6. Car
painting/metal furniture painting/spray painting
works 7. Child prostitution 8. Construction
9. Dyeing workshop worker 10. Electric mechanic
11. Engineering workshop worker 12. Goldsmith's
assistant 13. Hotel/Mess cook 14. Laundry boy
15. Porter 16. Printing press worker 17. Rickshaw/rickshaw
van puller 18. Saw mill worker 19. Small soap
factory worker (crude process) 20. Sweeper 21.
Scavenger (waste pickers) 22. Tannery factory
worker 23. Tempo/truck/bus helper/unlicensed
tempo driver 24. Welding worker 25. Shrimp processing
factory worker (processing by hand) 26. Vulcanizing
workshop assistant 27. Vangari (splinter/waste
collectors and processors). |
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| The
hazards, associated with these activities, were
largely due to: exposure to flames, working
with electricity, exposure to harmful chemical
substances, carcinogens, neurotoxins, gases,
fumes and organic dust, handling garbage, high-speed
machinery, inappropriate hand tools, sharp equipment,
extreme heat or cold, insufficient light, heavy
loads, continuous working with ice and water
without gloves and stressful working conditions.
In many cases the children were found working
without adequate safety measures; they did not
use gloves, protective shields and masks. When
personal protective equipment did not fit children,
they had to use alternative devices that did
not provide real protection, such as handkerchiefs
to cover their nose and mouth. |
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| The
activities and workplaces that were discovered
to be most hazardous included bedding manufacturing
shops, blacksmiths', making bricks or stone
chips, printing press, welding, scavenging,
plastic and rubber factories, shrimp processing,
engineering workshops and bidi factories. |
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| Child
labour in garment industries: Until recently
the garment industry was the biggest source
of employment for child workers in the formal
sector. A 1991 study entitled "The Conditions
of Garment Workers in Bangladesh" found 13 percent
of the workers to be working children. About
a third of the child workers were in fact school
dropouts. Child workers were mostly employed
as sewing helpers (66 percent) and finishing
helpers (15 percent). These were the lowest
paid jobs in the garment factories. The monthly
wage averaged 500 taka for sewing helpers and
585 taka for finishing helpers. Finishing helpers
worked 13 hours a day and sewing helpers 11
hours a day. During peak seasons child workers
had to work even during weekly holidays. |
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| Harkin's
bill : United States senator Harkin's bill
(1993), banning the import of products from
industries using child labour, changed the child
labour scenario in the garment industries to
a great extent. Garment employers dismissed
about 50,000 children from their factories immediately,
approximately 75 percent of all children in
the industry. Apparently these children were
freed, but in reality they were trapped in even
more hazardous and exploitative activities like
stone crushing, steel hustling, bidi making
and prostitution. |
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| Child
labour survey : In 1995 Bangladesh Garment
Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA),
ILO and UNICEF reached a Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) to eliminate child labour from more than
2000 garment factories and to provide the terminated
child workers with education and a monthly stipend
of 300 taka per child. This program also includes
verification and monitoring system to ensure
the compliance of the BGMEA factories with the
MOU. |
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| UNICEF
initiated the implementation of the education
program for terminated child workers in January
1996 through Gono Shahajya Sangstha (GSS) and
Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC).
By the middle of September 1996, 135 schools
were opened where 2080 children were enrolled.
This enrollment rate, however, proved to be
very low in view of the BGMEA statistics that
showed the number of terminated workers at 61,000
by 1996. This poor enrollment rate was due to
the fact that the 300-taka stipend only partially
made up for the lost income. A special drive
was organized from September 22 through October
31, 1996 to attract the dismissed workers to
schools. By November 19, 1996 the number of
children, attending the education program went
up to 7622 in 296 schools set up for them. |
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| Child
domestic workers: Child domestic service
is a widespread practice in Bangladesh. Although
children are employed as domestics throughout
the country, they have overwhelmingly high concentration
in the cities. "The Rapid Assessment of Child
Labour Situation in Bangladesh" (1996) estimated
that in the city of Dhaka alone there were about
300,000 child domestics. In one semi-residential,
typical city area with markets and roadside
workshops, namely Moghbazar, Dhaka, out of 1181
child workers, domestic helpers numbered 770.
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| Employers
in the urban areas usually recruit children
from their village homes through family, friends
or contacts. Most of the child domestic workers
come from the most vulnerable families, many
of them being orphans or abandoned children.
A good number of them are from the single-parent
families. Many poor parents consider themselves
extremely fortunate for having been able to
send their children to work for urban families. |
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| The
majority of child domestics tend to be between
12 and 17 years old, but children as young as
5 or 6 years old can also be found working.
A survey of child domestic workers found that
38 percent were 11 to 13 years old and nearly
24 percent were 5 to 10 years old. |
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| Child
domestics work very long hours, getting up well
before their employers and going to bed long
after them. On an average 50 percent of the
child domestic workers work 15-18 hours a day.
Irrespective of their gender, child domestics
carry out all sorts of household work. In addition,
boys often perform tasks like going to the grocery,
cleaning the drain, taking the garbage to roadside
bins, escorting the children to school and washing
the car. Girls, on the other hand, have to iron
the clothes, attend phone calls and serve the
guests. |
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| The
domestics are usually given the same type of
food as the employers, but they are given much
less. Their employers usually take care of their
daily necessities like clothes, oil, soap, comb,
towel, bedding and sleeping materials. Education
for child domestics, stood at 31 percent for
girls and 37 percent for boys. The child domestic
workers are often the least paid in the society,
their remuneration ranging from 80 taka to 400
taka per month. In most of the cases they hand
over all their earnings to their parents, leaving
nothing for themselves. |
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| Trafficking
of children: Bangladeshi children are smuggled
across the border by the traffickers and then
sold to buyers in the neighboring countries
of the sub continent or the Middle East. In
different locations of the city of Karachi in
Pakistan, such as Karimabad and Gulshan-e-Iqbal,
Bangladeshi girls are sold and bought in the
name of marriage or under the cover of religion
and morality. They move from one lord to another
and end up as slaves for life. Bangladeshi boys
are sent to Dubai and other destinations in
the Gulf to be used as jockeys in the camel
race. Though there is restriction on using children
less than 10 years of age in the camel race,
children as young as 4 or 5 years old are exploited.
Sometimes poor families do not hesitate to give
away their children on an advance payment of
only about US$ 500 and an assurance of future
employment for their children in the Middle
East. |
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| Organizations
working with child workers: The plight of
child workers in Bangladesh attracted the attention
of quite a few philanthropists from both home
and abroad. They initiated programs in the non-government
sector to promote welfare of the working children.
The most notable of them, a New Zealander, Mr.
L. N. Cheyne, on his visit to war-ravaged Bangladesh
in 1972, was particularly moved by the miseries
of the child workers in Dhaka; subsequently
he founded an international NGO, Underprivileged
Children's Educational Programs (UCEP), as a
beacon of hope for working children. UCEP, from
a modest beginning as a provider of general
education on a limited scale in Dhaka, has by
now emerged as the leading national NGO promoting
the cause of child workers in Bangladesh. UCEP
pursues "an integrated strategy of human resources
development, incorporating general education,
followed by skill training and employment placement
services" (Masum 1999). UCEP currently operates
30 general schools, 3 technical schools, 5 para-trade
training centres and has a total enrollment
of around 22,000. Each school operates three
shifts, each of two and half-hours' duration
to allow the working children to pursue education
while working. |
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| Some
other notable NGOs working with child workers
include Shoishab-Bangladesh and Ahsania Mission. |
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| Concluding
observations: |
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| Child
labour is a sheer reality in Bangladesh. Children
are engaged in hazardous jobs, working under
most unhygienic conditions. Yet the prevailing
socio-economic conditions do not permit outright
elimination of child labour overnight. Experiences
indicate that the elimination of child labour
from one particular industry may culminate in
an increase in child labour in another. Moreover,
it is not possible to force the child workers
to attend full-time schools since the lost income
is critical to the survival of their families.
Under these circumstances the government should
immediately come forward to formulate a comprehensive
National Plan of Action, aimed at gradual elimination
of child labour from the country in not too
distant a future. Such a plan of action should
attach priority to a large-scale replication
of the UCEP model of integrated human resources
development for child workers and actively seek
to put an immediate end to the most intolerable
forms of child labour. |
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UCEP
project performance at a glance:
(July
- December 1998)
Indicators
| Schools/Training
Centres: |
Number |
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General
schools (each school runs 3 shifts a day)
|
30
|
| Technical
schools (each school runs 2 shifts a day) |
3 |
| Para-trade
training centres (each centre runs 2 shifts
a day) |
5
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|
| No.
of students: |
|
| General
schools
| 20018
|
| Technical
schools |
1288
|
| Para-trade
training centres |
254
|
| 0000 |
|
| New
admission: |
|
| General
schools |
2740
|
| Technical
schools |
722
|
| Para-trade
training centres |
209
|
| 0000 |
|
| Gender
ratio ( male : female): |
|
| General
schools |
51:49
|
| Technical
schools |
68:32 |
| Para-trade
training centres |
61:39 |
| 0000 |
|
| Attendance
rate ( percent): |
|
| General
schools |
92.13
|
| Technical
schools |
95.70 |
| Para-trade
training centres |
92.50 |
| 0000 |
|
| Dropout
rate ( percent): |
|
| General
schools |
4.42
|
| Technical
schools |
2.65
|
| Para-trade
training centres |
1.00
|
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|
| Graduation
( number): |
|
| General
schools ( grade-V) |
2342
|
| General
Schools ( grade-VIII) |
1539
|
|
Technical schools para-trade |
577
|
| Training
centres |
142
|
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|
| Rate
of placement in job ( percent of graduates): |
|
| Technical
schools |
95.50
|
| Para-trade
training centres |
56.00
|
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|
| Man-days
covered in staff training: |
1842 |
| 0000 |
|
| Total
No. of employees ( as of 31 December 1998):
|
797 |
| 0000 |
|
| Total
expenses ( in million Taka): |
44.87 |
| 0000 |
|
| Cost
per student per day ( in Taka): |
|
| General
schools |
6.62
|
| Technical
schools |
53.78
|
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|
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| References: |
ILO
(1996): Child Labour: Targeting the Intolerable.
ILO, Geneva.
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IPEC-ILO (1997): Child Labour in Bangladesh:
Background Paper on the Issues,
Policies and Recommendations. ILO, Dhaka.
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Hasnat, B (1996): "International Trade and Child
Labour: The Hapless Fall Guys" The Independent
Jan. 12 &13, 1996, Dhaka.
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Masum, Professor Dr. M. (1999): UCEP-Bangladesh:
A Model for Integrated Human Resources Development
for the Working Children. UCEP-Bangladesh. |
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