Editorial
Children in hazardous work
Their plight highlighted
While launching a two-year-long study on " Code of conduct towards children in the informal sector", organised by Children Sweden-Denmark along with Together with Working Children (TWE), it was revealed that as high as nearly one crore children in Bangladesh are engaged in hazardous work of some kind or the other. Dr. Abul Barakat, a well known economist of the country who conducted the two-year-long study blamed the earlier governments for sheer lack of commitment and foresight in tackling this vital problem well ahead of its snowballing. According to ILO estimates, children in Bangladesh are engaged in 54 different categories of hazardous work.
Given the debilitating scenario, it is also our observation that total eradication of child labour would not be possible since it is deeply embedded with the socio-economic conditions of the country. However, as has rightly been pointed by one of our former advisers to caretaker government, laws could be enacted with a code of conduct for strict implementation by those who deal in and employ child labour.
Our children are one of the most deprived sections of our population, both in the urban and rural areas. Those coming from poorer segments of the population are not only engaged in hazardous work but are often used and abused in innumerable ways.
We thus wish to urge the government to give an urgent and serious attention to the nutritional aspects of childcare and their access to education in bettering the overall conditions of our children.
It is also important to understand that in Bangladesh perspective, child labour is a deep rooted social problem driven by poverty and economic deprivation. Thus if we are to contain the situation, an extensive awareness campaign has to be undertaken through a proactive role of both the electronic and print media.
People who employ children should also be duly motivated to run training courses with government and NGO assistance to groom the children up for adult life.
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