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Law caught napping

Unrecognised industries find it easy to hire child workers

Emran Hossain
Rashed Ali was the only kid among the 36 workers at the four rope factories in the capital's Keraniganj area in 1972, a year after the country's independence.
Now 55, Rashed is the only adult working with nine child labourers at a rope factory at Aganagar of Keraniganj.
It shows how child labour has taken a turn for the worse in the country over the years with unrecognised industries thriving on low-cost labour in the absence of proper government monitoring and lax enforcement of laws.
According to an ILO survey from 2002 to 2003, about 93 percent of the 7.4 million child labourers are engaged in work in unrecognised industries.
On the eve of the World Day Against Child Labour today, The Daily Star revisited some factories in the informal sector to see whether the situation has changed.
To get an idea of child labour in the informal sector, the newspaper kept on visiting the factories since 2009, particularly those producing rope, cookware and balloon, and also moulding workshops.
The number of rope factories has almost doubled to 12 from seven in Keraniganj over the last fouryears, according to Rashed.
A 12-year-old boy, Sumon, was still working at the same Keraniganj rope factory for five years, while his eight-year-old brother Mamun switched his job to a restaurant forTk 1,200 a month.
Sumon's co-worker Ibrahim, a physically-challenged boy, also changed his job, and moved somewhere else with his parents. Ibrahim was beaten by his supervisor at the factory, and the incident was reported by The Daily Star on December 10, 2009.
On condition of anonymity, a worker at the same factory said police and NGO workers visited the factory after the report was published, only to be entertained by the factory owner.
On June 9, this correspondent witnessed at least two incidents of physical assault on child labourers in Keraniganj.
Shahjahan Ali, now 42, started working at a cook-
ware factory in Kamrangirchar at the age of 12.
He said at least a thousand kids are producing cookware in 60 factories in his area alone. He put the total number of child labourers in Kamrangirchar at 4,000.
Working more than 43 hours a week is considered detrimental to a child's physical and mental health and a "hazardous job" for a child.
Generally, most child labourers work 13 hours a day in deplorable working conditions, sometimes at extremely high temperatures, for a wage as low as Tk 30 a day, found The Daily Star.
The country didn't have a comprehensive child policy until last year when it was decided for the first time that anyone below the age of 18 is a child.
In 2011, the then Unicef Country Director Carel De Rooy was frustrated at child labour scenario in Bangladesh and the government's indifference to the issue given that half of the country's population is children.
Grown up in Brazil, Rooy recollected how denial of a dignified life turned generations of children into criminals only in four decades. He compared the situation in Bangladesh to the one prevailing in Mexico, Nigeria, Senegal and Kenya.
"This is unfortunate that none of your leaders realises the gravity of the situation. Bangladesh is a country having no mentionable mineral resources. The only resource it has is the people. The government must invest on children to maximise their potential or else these children will become a huge liability," said Rooy.
NO CHILD LABOUR, PLEASE - PAGE 12