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RIGHTS investigation

Prohibition of child labour and minimum age for employment
Because of widespread poverty, many children began to work at a very young age. According to the Government's National Child Labour Survey published in November 2003, the Government estimated that approximately 3.2 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 years worked. Working children were found in 200 different types of activities, such as shrimp farming, of which 49 were regarded as harmful to children's physical and mental well-being. Sometimes children were seriously injured or killed in workplaces. For example, on January 17, a child age 13 died when he became stuck to a conveyer belt while he worked in a spinning mill at Savar.
Children often worked alongside family members in small-scale and subsistence agriculture. Hours usually were long, the pay low, and the conditions hazardous. Many children worked in the beedi (hand-rolled cigarette) industry, and children under 18 years sometimes worked in hazardous circumstances in the leather industry or the brick-breaking industry. An estimated 10,000 children worked long hours on fish farms on small islands in Southwestern Bagerhat district for 5 months a year in hazardous conditions. The farm owners paid and fed the children poorly. The Coast Guard periodically rescued and returned child workers to their home villages.
Children routinely performed domestic work. The Government sometimes brought criminal charges against employers who abused domestic servants. Under the law, every child must attend school through grade 5 or the age of 10 years. However, there was no effective mechanism to enforce this provision.
There was virtually no enforcement of child labor laws outside the export garment sector. Penalties for child labour violations were nominal fines ranging from an estimated $4 to $10 (taka 228 to taka 570). Most child workers were employed in agriculture and other informal sectors, where no government oversight occurred.
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers' and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the Department of Labour, and the ILO jointly inspected an estimated 4,000 BGMEA-member factories with the declared intention of eliminating child labour in the garment sector. The inspectors found 23 children working in 11 of those factories between January and August 25. Each factory having child labour was fined $100 (taka 5,900). According to the ICFTU, there was a significant reduction of child labour in the garment industry; while 43 percent of exporting factories used child labour in 1995, by 2001 the figure had fallen 5 percent to 38 percent. Former child employees were also offered a small monthly stipend to help replace their lost income while attending UNICEF-sponsored schools.
The Non-Formal Education Directorate of the Government, international organisations, and some NGO partners sponsored programs to provide education to some working children in urban slum areas around the country. The Government has been a member of ILO-IPEC since 1994. ILO-IPEC programs include a $6 million project to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in five targeted industries: beedi production, matchmaking, tanneries, construction, and child domestic workers. As of December 2003, 19,874 children had been removed from hazardous work, 19,508 were attending non-formal education training, 7,623 had been admitted to formal schooling, and 3,060 were receiving pre-vocational training. Employers from 51 beedi and brick-breaking industries have declared their sites child labour free.
Source: US Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2004.