BANGLADESH'S young population (under 18), comprising 45% of the total population are virtually unnoticed. They are vast untapped wealth that could be turned into effective

manpower. Born mostly of poor parents, the male children supplement the meager income of the parents, while most female children in urban areas work as domestic help.

A big number of them fall into the clutches of child traffickers and end up in red light areas in the country or outside.

Many child domestic help live and work in conditions that are oppressive, exploitative, abusive and worse than adults would accept for the same work. The poignant part is that as they belong to the informal labour sector, thus they are excluded from legal protection, which makes them even more vulnerable. Most horrifyingly, around 22 to 50% of the 2.5 million people forced into labour after being trafficked are children.

According to a baseline survey (BBS and Unicef), other than 7.4 million working in the informal sector, as many as 400,000 children aged between 6-17 years, 80% of them female, work as domestic workers (CDW), and are almost invisible and inaccessible to government surveillance, NGO inspection and even to neighbours. In a report revealed by the Unicef recently, it was pointed out that the plight of the poor urban children is really horrific. They suffer much greater deprivation than those in the countryside.

Slum population has grown rapidly in the cities and towns as the landless poor migrate to these places, driven by poverty and natural disasters. With no money for proper accommodation, it is estimated that around one-third of the urban population in the six large cities now live in slums.

Most of the male children labour in factories and fields until their hands are gnarled and backs bent. Many of them wander homeless in the streets, surviving by begging and even thieving. Sleeping in railway stations or bus stands or on the footpaths, picking through garbage and sift-

ing for food in the municipal dumps! They die every day of easily preventable diseases.

The conferences, meetings or seminars that are often convened by political parties in an effort to care for the vast population remain confined to taking agenda. Recommendations made to the policy makers in National Child Domestic Worker Convention about empowering children economically, as well as arresting exploitation, creating job opportunities for the parents in the rural areas and enacting laws to protect child workers from exploitation and abuse are fine on paper but implementation seems to be a far cry.

While there is widespread call for an end to forced child labour, some affluent and educated people have hit headlines because of their cruel treatment of these domestic help. In a report published in a Bangla daily, it was revealed that a domestic worker in the Sabujbagh area of the city died after being

subjected to torture for days. Both the husband and wife were arrested by the police later.

Girl children are not also safe in the schools. Much to our concern, teachers in many educational institutions in the country who are supposed to work primarily as educators, more precisely as moral educators, have come out as predators. A report published in Prothom Alo on August 4,2011 said that in Ramu upazila of Cox's Bazaar, a headmaster of a school was arrested for violating a girl student who became pregnant. The

headmaster, who was later arrested, tried to hush up the case by offering Tk.3 lakh to the victim's family.

Our failure to delve deep into this issue and grapple with it properly now threatens to explode it into a catastrophe. This will mean turning the country into a snow capped volcano — pretty and calm at the top but serious problems seething within. Moreover, given the fact that girl children born of poor parents are married off early, the present move by the government to reduce the "children classification" age to 16 years will violate the rights of the children.

How can we fight shy of the problem that warrants our attention most? What horrify-

ing drudgery and waste of human energy at the prime of one's life due to lack of economic protection, guidance and motivation? Boys aged between 8 and 12 are engaged in hazardous jobs in most small factories, workshops, brick kilns, etc., and their daily wages range from Tk.50-80 for 12 hours a day.

Juvenile crime in Bangladesh has exploded in recent years along with organised crimes. Arrests are sometimes made but they are released on bail because of the loopholes in the investigation and strong backing by their mentors. Punishment is hardly meted out to the real offenders. These

kids are not to blame for the crimes they commit. In most cases they are lured by drug lords and some unscrupulous political masters in the area with cash money to work as couriers of drug and in the process they themselves get addicted to drugs and when the demand for drug is so keen, they can commit any crime, even kill a person. Poor parents sometimes indulge in crimes themselves and encourage their children to work as couriers because it brings them money.

Political leaders and the people must wake up to the fact that the time for reckoning has arrived. Drug addiction and drug trafficking among youths are eating into the vitals of the nation. The police chief of the country has time and again made it plain that drug is the biggest enemy of the country and most crimes are drug-fuelled. But one wonders if the law enforcers are really very serious to wipe out this scourge! News of raids in differ-

ent areas in Dhaka city gets leaked before such raids are conducted and on no occasion could the drug lords be apprehended.

How unfortunate the situation is that the saddest casualties are children in this trade! We have a whole generation of human beings in the country who could be so productive and helpful for the country but are being lost. The drug trade obviously has shown them that in a little time they can make a lot of money, and they have accepted the violence that goes with it. Government effort to curb the daunting problem of drug smuggling, vandalism, and even child trafficking has been far from satisfactory.

The looming question is that whether the society and the government can do anything to protect the children from these scourges. What has dismayed the vast majority of the people is the tepid response of the government and the national leaders to this surge of mayhem indulged in by the youngsters. The way the whole country is plunging into chaos because of the apathy and neglect shown towards this vital section of the society, the cream of the whole population, signals a potential calamity for the whole nation.

The government must wake up to the stark reality that this vulnerable group of population needs care and sustenance to ward off the disasters facing the nation. Social welfare department may be restructured and their gamut of activities may be re-oriented in the light of the present horrifying state of the social ills creeping into the fabric of the nation.

The writer is a columnist of The Daily Star.

E-mail: aukhandk@gmail.com