Child Labor in Bangladesh

Sadia Mahjabeen

Professor Natalia Knoblock

ENG111

24th October, 2016

                                          Child Labor in Bangladesh

Asma is a 15 year old girl who has been working in different houses as a domestic house worker since she was 10. She used to lead a care-free, joyous life and studied in a local school out of the city. However, things changed when poverty struck her family and she was sent off to the city in search of household jobs. Her family was helpless and so poor that they had to stop her from going to school. Neither could they pay for her school fees nor could they bare her personal expenses. Most families living in the rural areas outside the Dhaka city are not financially stabled and Asma belonged to one of those families where poverty was an everyday struggle.

I met Asma at my aunt’s house and I was astonished to see a girl of her age is doing all the household chores; starting from cooking to cleaning, serving the food to ironing the clothes, she did everything all by herself. My cousin is older than her but she still orders her to do all her work, clean her clothes, pack her school bag, and even bringing a glass of water every day after she comes back from work. Nonstop! Yet she does not complain. She is happy with whatever she gets. “I cannot wait to send this month’s salary and new clothes to my parents. I wish I could see the smile on their faces!” She sounded the happiest person alive. Perhaps no one will realize how hard she has worked to see her parents happy.
        Unfortunately, child labor is legal in Bangladesh. Nearly five million children are fighting with their lives to bring income for their families or themselves. Just like Asma, there are thousands of underprivileged children in the rural areas of Bangladesh who have no other choice except for coming to Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, to work as a domestic helper, as the last mean to support their families. Two-thirds of the working middle class people employ these children as domestic help. Most are not paid, but only working for food, clothing and lodging. Some of the educated, well-earned families do not treat them as human beings. They load them up with lots and lots of chores and if they fail to complete them on time, these helpless kids probably do not deserve their meals for the day. Adding more to that, if they make any mistake, they would beat the child until he or she learns their lesson. However, there are also many of them who prefer living in slums and sell candies or flowers in the streets. These young children serve at roadside tea stalls, and weave between cars to sell good to motorists. In addition to that, many girls are common employees of the garment industries. Sadly, the children employment rate is increasing day by day. The only reason is, hiring these children are cheaper and they obey more than adults which is considered to be very compliant.

        Education is a basic right of a child and only education can make a person resourceful and a good quality citizen. If a child does not get education, he or she will not have a change to get out of poverty, and will not able to provide for his/her children in the future. Their children will also have to drop out of school and start working thus making the problem continue for generations. However, most of the poor and vulnerable parents who live in the remote villages can only afford to offer food and lodging but they cannot offer additional expenses such as education to their children. These parents find their children resourceful if they are able to help them financially.

As a result, they become victims of child abuse in different places. The employers who hire these children as workers, they believe that if they stop their means of earning, these kids will become fierce, either they will die of hunger or they will go out begging or stealing. They will meet bad people and involve themselves in such crimes that they will not be able to help themselves out of it. Hunger drives them to do many things; some become drug addicts, some become thieves and sexual abuse is definitely very common. If children start working in such places where they perform hard labor, they can't grow up healthy. Again, they will be poor, will not be able to support their own families. Because children can't concentrate as well as adults and they get tired faster, they are more likely to get injured on the job. 

Many of these hard working children labor in very precarious line of work such as agriculture, manufacture, construction, retail and marginal activities as said by Md. Aulad Hossain. Most of the children residing in rural areas help their families by engaging themselves in agricultural work. Therefore, children working in cultivation suffer high rates of injuries. They often endure cuts from sharp knives and falls from ladders. They may be crushed or injured by tractors and other heavy equipment. They risk back injuries from dragging heavy loads of manufacture. Furthermore, exposure to pesticides is another sever threat to the health of child agricultural workers. Risk of pesticides can be hazardous for children. It gets tougher to expel toxin from a child’s body as their organs are still developing.

 “Moreover in urban areas, children are often engaged in different small and medium enterprises where there are some general hazards that arise not from the production process but from uncaring management. Examples of these problems are naked electric wires, lack of first aid facilities, poor ventilation, lack of sanitation, lack of sufficient light, heavy lifting, exposure to loud noise, proximity or operation of dangerous machines, and the lack of protective equipment. Thus child labor sustains bad physical and mental conditions of the children and poverty in their late life. It generally reduces their potential of making a livelihood in later life, which clearly degrades society's stock of human capital.”(Hossain)