Concern over delay in child labour elimination

FE ReportLabour leaders, experts and newsmen have said the government has been using eight-year old data of child labour in the country to implement various programmes as part of its commitment to eliminate child labour from the country by 2015. According to a 2003 survey conducted by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), there are 3.8 million child workers in the country out of whom 1.3 million children are employed in hazardous labour. Terming it a disturbing phenomenon they also expressed their concern about the success of achieving the target as the implementation process was very slow. They were speaking at a workshop titled 'Role of Media in Creating Awareness to Eliminate Child Labour' at Dhaka Reporters' Unity in the city Wednesday. Organised jointly by Jatiyo Sramik League and International Labour Organisation (ILO) Bangladesh, the discussion meet was addressed, among others, by Andre Bogui, country director of ILO Bangladesh, Roy Ramesh Chandra, general secretary, Jatiya Sramik League, Shukur Mahmud, labour leader and Shuvo Kibria, executive editor of weekly Shaptahik. The speakers stressed the need for compliance of ILO Convention 182 and taking necessary actions to prevent and eliminate hazardous child labour from the country. Andre Bogui said Bangladesh has set up an example by eliminating child labour from its readymade garments (RMG) sector though the number of children engaged in other sectors is still quite high. He said elimination of child labour requires a lot of investment and participation of all quarters of the society. He stressed the need for media's role in educating people and monitoring the various programmes taken up by the government in this connection. Commenting on the progress of national plan of action in eliminating child labour by 2015, he said ILO wants to see child labour elimination as the top priority in Bangladesh and this needs to be accelerated. In the keynote paper Roy Ramesh Chandra said child labour employment in hazardous labour takes place due to the greed of a section of employers and lack of awareness among the parents making immense loss to the nation. "As the child workers use all their labour in their very childhood they lose their merit and skill. It will result in shortage of skilled labour force in future in almost every sector," he said. Mr Ramesh said though economic development has made much progress with the present state of globalisation, minimum wage and social security of labourers in the developing countries like Bangladesh have not increased in real terms. "Generally child labourers come from labourers' families. If a labourer could earn a standard wage he could fulfil the basic needs of the family and send his children to school," he added. He alleged that though the government ratified the ILO convention 182 (1999) in 2001, it had not still taken any step to make clauses in laws which could create legal bindings for employers not to employ child labourers. He also emphasised the media's role to act as a pressure group for the government in implementing various laws in this connection. Shuvo Kibria said it is a dangerous situation that the country has not yet updated the data and information on child labourers though it wants to eliminate child labour. Mr Kibria expressed his concern over lack of legal framework for getting legal help in case of abuse of child labourers.