Reports of brutal killing of a domestic help Moina (14) in Munshiganj and Monimala recently in the city are most horrifying. The demonic mistress Kalpana Mazumdar unleashed the worst kind of barbarism by throwing Monimala from the roof that resulted in her death. All these incidents of atrocities indicate a growing frenzy of intolerance among a section of suddenly-rich populace. In fact, atrocities perpetrated on these hapless and defenceless children working as domestic help have crossed the line between human and animal behaviour.

Child Rights Forum reports carried by the newspapers in the recent past revealed that in the last two years, about 2400 children in the country were victims of murder, abduction, rape and trafficking. Among them 587 children were murdered, 487 abducted, 565 raped and 787 trafficked outside the country, mostly to be used as camel jockeys in Arab countries. On the other hand admitting the fact that the incidence of violence on domestic helps has been with us always, now it is spreading in a menacing proportion to more and more homes. National Crime Records Bureau report states that crime against girl child is increasing dangerously.

Too many children are doing some dreadful jobs in tannery industry, shrimp processing industries, glass factories, welding and metal workshops. Child labour is hardly a new concern, having been fiercely debated -- and mostly outlawed in the West in the last century. In the country, an estimated 30 million children are working under different vocations of whom 40 percent are on farms and about 20 percent on household jobs. Child labour problem is most common in areas where there have been no land reform and no education.

Despite the fact that child labour has been withdrawn from the garments sector in Bangladesh following international pressure, there are still thousands of children eking out a living under oppressive situations in other vocations. They are working either to support themselves or their families. The number of children doing such odd jobs as splitting stones for the construction works or picking trash from the streets, or packing groceries, or working as hotel boys or coolies in bus and railway stations or working as bus helpers or even pulling rickshaws outnumber those 10,000 child workers just withdrawn from the garment factories.

The city's garbage dumps are home to many of them. These rubbish pickers spend their days sifting through mountains of obnoxious refuse, looking for recyclable objects such as glass, paper, polythene, cardboard, empty cans, metal and food remnants. Doubtless, they make the best scavengers, they can scurry more easily among the piles of garbage. But how can society and the government face such a cruel fact that God's best creation, because they were born poor or with no father or no mother to support them in the most formative years of their lives, are destined to end up their lives in garbage dumps or cardboard shanties?

In a report released by an international NGO group in 1998 named "Anti-Slavery Society", it has been revealed that as many as 3 million children are working as child labour in different parts of Bangladesh. Doubtless, with population boom that 3 million has increased considerably by now.

Grim accounts of poor girls under 14 being taken away from the country and sold to foreign brokers and prostitutions are pouring in with sickening frequency and they make headlines when such secret trade is unearthed by women activist groups. In spite of the fact that the country has stricter laws to stop such illegal trade and abuse, the administration during the last five years and earlier has hardly been able to ensure protection to these teenagers from exploitation or to arrest this trend of being trapped into such abominable trades.

The condition of the children lacking support of the family or parents beggars description. They wander homeless in the streets of Dhaka, Chittagong and other cities often surviving by thievery or begging in absence of any means of living. Although we talk glibly that children are the future of the country, we mean it in a very narrow sense. We employ them either in our homes, factories or business concern to perform chores that we would normally hesitate to delegate to our own children. To employ children in harmful works is strictly prohibited by the country's labour laws but enforcement has never been taken seriously. The fact is: factory owners prefer young workers because they can be paid less and bullied into working longer hours without complaint.

The real reason children are allowed to work in underdeveloped countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Philippines is the indifference of the ruling elites to these impoverished groups. Shockingly, as things stand today in the country, certain kinds of children get the best education in the world. But there are others who are believed to be born to work with their hands and do not need any education. "The families of the child labourers are the same families who don't have access to healthcare. And they are the same families who are largely illiterate," says Richard Young, chief of Community Development in SE Asian region, U.N. Children's Fund.

China is a vast country with a population of about 1.2 billion but child labourers there are only an estimated 5 million. In Beijing the most common official complaint is one rarely heard in other regions that children in factories are missing out on education. Lamentably, in Bangladesh population boom takes place mostly in the impoverished families and most of the children born of poor parents are never in a position to receive the most basic education. Ironically true, even when there has come about explosion of knowledge worldwide, education for the poor in Bangladesh is something we don't see as necessary at all. It's almost as if the poor don't have the same desires and aspirations as the rich.

Predictably, in the vast Bangladesh region, we may have hundreds and thousands of meritorious boys and girls who are born to blush unseen because of lack of support and opportunities. However, in a favourable situation when the present CTG has shown willingness to encourage school enrolment through introduction of large number of scholarships and stipends and providing books and stationeries free of cost to the poorest section in the remotest areas of the country, as revealed in the Hon. Adviser's Budget speech, and their commendable effort of bringing the student- teacher ratio to 46 : 1 from present 55: 1 to lure children of the poorest section to primary schools, there might be a change in the school dropout cases from now on.

The feeling of powerlessness that goes with being illiterate comes through loud and clear in any conversation with ordinary people and that emphasizes the need for a major improvement of the country's schooling system. Despite the fact that government in the last one decade launched the literacy drive through programmes like "Food for Education", "Total Literacy Movement" and now cash incentive for enrolment, success is still a far cry. However, much remains to be done in terms of action. Without confronting the alarming trend of the decline of teacher-pupil ratio, infrastructural facilities, appointing right type of people for primary schooling programme, and bringing about general improvement in the economic condition of the parents, and over all monitoring and surveillance in curbing the endemic corruption embedded in the programme, success in educating the children or alleviating poverty situation will remain an elusive proposition.

Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.