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Victims of apathy and neglect

Md. Asadullah Khan
IN the backdrop of the observance of National Children’s Day coinciding with the birthday of Bangabondhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made a clarion call for creating national consensus for establishing the rights of children. Her call to the affluent section of the country’ for improving the plight of the vulnerable section of the society must not go unheeded.
Despite the fact that child labourers have been withdrawn from the garments sector, there are still thousands of children in the country eking out a living under oppressive circumstances in other vocations. The number of children doing odd jobs, such as breaking stones, picking trash from the streets, or making imitation jewellery, or as coolies in rail stations and bus terminals, is larger than that of the ones withdrawn from the garments factories.
Abbas, a boy of 12 working in an imitation jewellery' factory, had high hopes in life. He wanted to study and help the
family with a meaningful employment. But with his father, a rickshaw puller, being disabled in a road accident, all his hopes have been dashed to the ground. He had to take charge of a 4- member fand'. including his parents after abandoning his school in the village.
Reports in a Bangla daily indicated that in wards 60 and 61 of the Dhaka City Corporation, there are about 700 small factories and about 2000 child workers below age 16, all coming from rural areas. Most of them are victims of river erosion, flood and other natural calamities.
Grim accounts of poor girls under 14 being sold are pouring in. A report by the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA) revealed that every year about 1000 children, mostly girls, are trafficked outside the country. In spite of the fact that the country has strict laws to stop repression and abuse, we have hardly been able to ensure protection to these underprivileged teenagers from exploitation, or to arrest this trend.
The staggering number of children, about 30 million under the age of eight,
Don't minors have any rights?
remaining without proper food and schooling, points to a grim future for the country. Although the number of children initially enrolled in primary schools ranges up to 87%, almost 60% of them dropout, mainlydue to poverty. Only40% can somehow cross the primary stage of schooling.
18 lakh street children in the country are eking out a miserable existence without food, nutrition and shelter, as revealed in a Unicef report. There are about one lakh and fifty thousand children working as domestic helps in Dhaka
city alone.
The seminars that are occasionally convened by our leaders in an effort to care for the vast multitude of underprivileged children remain confined to making recommendations. Undoubtedly, the plight of the vulnerable group remains unchanged. We have not so far witnessed any tangible program translated into appreciable action, other than what Underprivileged Children s Education Program (Ucep) has been doing over the years.
From its modest start with only 60
students in 1972, the enrolment of students under Ucep in different trades and technical schools now stands at 34,000 in 48 Integrated General and Vocational (IGV) schools. Ucep is still the only NGO working with the distressed urban workingchildren.
Our failure to grapple with the issue of rural poor children has exploded into a catastrophic situation. Taking advantage of their poverty, children are being picked up by extremist elements and ultra-religious groups with lure of money and food. This will mean turning the country into a snow capped volcanopretty and calm on top but with serious problems seething within.
How do we fight the problem that warrants our attention most, the horrifying drudgery and waste of human energy at the prime of one's life due to lack of economic protection, guidance and motivation? Sleeping in railway stations, picking through garbage and sifting for food in municipal dumps is the lot of these children. School is a luxury.
However, with such a precarious economic viability and scant resources at the disposal of the government, we can't get rid of the dreaded scourges like disease and poverty. Developed countries should allow their surplus funds to flow into the poverty-ridden countries like Bangladesh for the emancipation, education and healthcare of the less fortunate in this region. This would help tap the immense opportunities needed for economic
recovery and well-being of the people, allowing the children in this region access to better living and education.
With recession gripping all the countries, and more so the poorest nations, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki moon has issued a clarion call to the affluent nations to extend a helping hand to the distressed countries.
Political leaders and common people must wake upto the fact that that the time for reckoning has-arrived. If the country has to prosper, if it has to carve out a self-sustaining future, it should not have a lack-lustre education system, or an infrastructure that is falling apart.
We have a whole generation of human beings in the country who could be productive and helpful to humanity but are being lost. What has dismayed the vast majority of the people who want the society to move in the right direction is the tepid response of government and national leaders to this problem.
The way the whole country is plunging into chaos because of the apathy and neglect shown towards this vital section of the society signals a potential calamity for the nation. In fact, the whole country has inherited decades of neglect, misplaced priorities and outright incompetence at every level.
Md Asadullah Khan Is a fanner teacher of physics and Controllerof Examinations. BUET
E-mail: aukhantxi@gmail.com