Six-year-old human hauler attendant!

A photograph of a young boy hanging on to a human hauler he works as an attendant of, published on the front page of this newspaper on Wednesday, shows perfectly the unfortunate plight of millions of children in our country. The boy, only six-years-old, has apparently been working as a helper for a month already. During that time, we wonder how it is that the police did not notice him, and if they did, we wonder how they could have turned a blind eye given how dangerous it is for a boy of such young age to be hanging from the hauler like this.

It should go without saying that such a hazardous job is not meant for a six-year-old child. UNICEF data, however, shows that there are more than 4.5 million children aged 5 to 14 in the workforce. Granted not all of them are exposed to such hazardous work, it still cannot be denied that the number of them working dangerous jobs is substantially large. 

At such a young age, children should go to school and not have to risk injury or worse, to put bread on the table for their families. With that in mind, Bangladesh had passed a Labour Law setting the minimum legal age for employment as 14 in 2006. Enforcement, however, has been shockingly absent.

This is unacceptable and the authorities need to shake off their apathy to the plight of these young children. Law enforcers too must stop turning a blind eye to cases such as the one in question and enforce the law strictly.