Fri 24 Jun 2005
The issue of child labour continues to be a controversial one because due to extreme poverty many young children are forced to work to stay alive. But, what these children need is a practical alternative that is not fuelled by high emotion and thoughtless rhetoric.
Unchaining hearts & dreams! by Mehrin Lubna, New Age Xtra, June 17
Photo: GMB Akash
‘My husband is unemployed for almost a year now; at first we borrowed money to buy food for our children, hoping that it wouldn’t be long till my husband gets a job but as weeks passed, people stopped lending us and instead started pressurising us to pay up what we had borrowed,’ said Maksuda Akhter and continued, ‘we would have starved to death if Mr. Aminur Ahmed hadn’t been kind enough to hire my son Sumon in his balloon factory as a labourer.’ Sumon, a 10 year old, works 14 hours a day at Saimon Balloon Factory and earns a measly amount of TK110 every week. ‘I know that my son should be studying at this age rather than working to support his family. However, if his father had a job then I wouldn’t have sent him to work,’ she said.
Thousands of children in Bangladesh are forced into labour in order to sustain their family and in the process miss the chance to go to school and it’s believed that lack of job opportunities for adults is doubling up the number of child labourers throughout Bangladesh; consequently, small factories and workshops mushrooming along the alleys of Dhaka City, employ children as labourers. ‘I do want to go to school and learn how to read and write, but then, who will look after my family? Who would earn for my parents if I went to school?’ retorted Md. Ekhlas, another 10-year-old working at an aluminium factory in Dhaka.
