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Labour or torture?

Md Shairul Mashreque
A national child labour policy is going to be adopted very soon, which is really good news. There must be a well-balanced public policy to establish the rights of the child labourers and improve the child labour situation.
Child labour, a longstanding exploitative structure, is a social vice. Thousands of poor children fall prey to the notorious labour exploitation mechanism. The employer-employee relationship here is lopsided -- service without terms of employment. A poor child is engaged in inhuman, hazardous and risky works, with a meager wage in a cruel environment.
The child employee is subject to acts of kindness or malice depending on his luck or misfortune. If the master is good with humanitarian predisposition the working child gets good treatment with education and the opportunity to blossom into a complete human being. This is rare in this mundane world full of cruelties. In most cases, the master treats the young
employees with blatant cruelty. There is no law to prevent torturing of working children.
The patrons engage poor children and take full advantage of their pitiable condition. The children serving in residences do not get proper remuneration, food and medical facilities. There is no proper living arrangement for the servants. There are incidences of inhuman torture of young servants by the employers. There is also news of molestation of young maidservants by the males in the family.
Innumerable children engage in hazardous jobs like breaking bricks and stones without protective equipments. Some work in restaurant and motor workshops. The pangs of hunger force little girls into child prostitution.
The child labour scenario in Bangladesh does not meet the provisions of the ILO convention. This is a gross violation of human rights. The ILO convention states that a job that contradicts the right to education is not approved for a 12 year-old child. Scores of seminars on the occasion of
child day proclaim the right to education for children, removal of obstacles to child development, slopping of perilous child labour and ending of child exploitation by the employees.
ILO and Unicef advocate for measures to curb child labour. The UN Convention on Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has been universally ratified. There is institutional arrangement, as reflected in national child policy, the children act, 1974, and some ordinances to prevent child labour. This is well in conformity with constitutional provisionsand UNCRC.
The present government is actively considering formulation of a national child labour policy. Il is. of course, a good move. We have a child policy. Bui we do not have child labour policy. We may contend that if there is child labour there must be must be a control mechanism to erase its evils through legislation and public policy.
One may wonder whether all such policy and legislative measures will be mere paper tigers. We have laws to protect child workers from the deluge of exploitation. The problem lies with implementation. If antiquated legal procedures and codes framed during the colonial period come into conflict with a future child labour policy the implementation process will be in the dock.
Street children, children working in ship-breaking industries, young maid
servants and young hawkers and potters, van pullers, etc. should be brought under the fold of the policy. A phenomenon like child labour cannot be eliminated by legislation because so many extremely poor families send
theirchildren to workforbare survival.
We have to think of the gravity of the crisis of destitution, the need for child participation as working force, and an age limit for child labour. We would like to suggest remedies and recom-
mend policy strategies to combat child labour exploitation after the draft policy is ready for open discussion.
Dr Md Shairul Mashreque is Professor. Department of PublicAdministration. Chittagong University.