Care for children must for economic emancipation

THE landmark study by the UNICEF that some 3.3 crore children -- about half of the child population -- are living in abject poverty while one in four children is deprived of four basic necessities, made public in Dhaka in recent past, has come as a pathetic reminder of the state of the children in the country. Unquestionably true, as the lead consultant Prof. Abul Barakat said, that majority of the Millennium Development Goals that are related to children will remain unattainable without giving proper attention to children.
According to UNICEF about 67 lakh and 84 thousand children in the country are engaged in hard labour that include 4 lakh 34 thousand male children and 3 lakh 33 thousand female children between age range 5 and 9. According to some investigative reports, children aged between 5 and 12 work hard for at least 12 hours at a stretch, featuring one of the worst
Samiul, a 12 year-old boy hailing from Nilphamari is now working in a motor workshop in Mirpur to support his mother and two tender aged sisters. While narrating the sad plight of the family, he explained how his father abandoned them in a miserable condition. Finding no meaningful job to stay alive in the native village, his mother with her two kids came to Dhaka. His mother is working as maid in some houses but her earnings are hardly enough to keep them alive. Samiul would not disclose the amount he gets per day as per directive of his employer. That only underscores the fact as to how these children are being exploited.
Like many other children, Mamun (12) and Sumon (8), two brothers work in a rope factory in Keraniganj and both of them earn Tk. 100 per day. These tender aged boys risk serious health hazards. Besides jute particles, they children are also exposed to micro-fibres that might cause fibrosis of the lungs, as one professor of National Institute of Chest Diseases hospital said in a recent interview. These children work under conditions of slavery or semi-slavery with no legal or medical protection.
Newspaper reports about brutal torture on domestic helps by employers in the big cities and even small towns of the country have gained alarming frequency. While there is widespread call for an end to forced child labour and repression on children, some affluent and educated families in the capital and other major cities have hit headlines for torturing domestic helps. Report published in The Daily Star on November 26 last of brutal torture on Nazma, a domestic help in a house at Satkhira, by her lady employer is really horrifying. For all humankind, it is shameful and criminal that there are more than 30 million exploited children in the country. We see them rummaging in garbage for a scrap of food or groping in darkness for a place to sleep.
Report published in The Daily Star on November 3 last indicated that coastguards rescued 46 boys from a fishermen's colony at Dublar Char near the Bay of Bengal. Report also indicated that these tender aged boys were brought there from different districts for forced labour.
Although the number of children initially enrolled in primary schools ranges up to 75 per cent of the total, almost 60 per cent of them drop out, mainly due to poverty. Only 40 per cent can somehow cross the primary stage of schooling. The report made public by the Mass Literacy Campaign, an NGO, points that if the present trend continues, only 20 students out of 100 enrolled at the primary level in 2010 will be sitting for the SSC examination in 2019.
While other countries in the world talk about the need to invest in their youth, much of Bangladesh has converted its youth into a pernicious capital investment : too many children are working in different fields, and in most dreadful jobs. In a host of small scale factories and workshops, it is children who dip match sticks into phosphorous, mix the gunpowder for fire crackers, roll the bidis, weave the carpets and are engaged in tannery factories dealing in toxic chemicals, welding machines, glass factories, motor workshops, re-rolling machines, shrimp processing factories and hazardous ship breaking industries.
Despite the fact that child labourers have been withdrawn from garments sector following international pressure, there are still thousands of children eking out a living under oppressive situations in other vocations. The number of children doing such odd jobs as splitting stones for the construction works, or picking trash from the streets or packing groceries, working as hotel boys and rickshaw pullers or coolies or helpers in bus and railway stations etc. far outnumbers those -- say, about 10,000 child workers withdrawn from the garments factories years back.
Grim accounts of poor girls under14 being taken away from around the country and sold to brokers and brothels are pouring in with sickening frequency. In spite of the fact that the country has strict laws to stop such abuse, we have hardly been able to ensure protection to these teenagers.
The city's garbage dumps are home to many of them. These rubbish pickers spend their days sifting through mountains of stinking refuse, looking for recyclable objects. Doubtless, children make the best scavengers, they can scurry more easily among the piles of garbage. But how can society and the administration face such a cruel fact that God's best creation, because they were born poor or with no father and mother to support them in the formative years of their lives, are destined to end up in garbage dumps or in cardboard shanties ?
These unfortunate children, often the product of broken homes, victims of recent climatic upheaval and river erosion trek into the big cities like Dhaka and Chittagong with hope to have a living and shelter. But a life on the pavement is the only fate they meet in the long last. True to every sense of the term, most of our children live in a state of violence, persecution, rejection and forced labour. In this sad setting, the only escape for many is drug and other anti-social activities.
With the enactment of stricter laws as well as stringent enforcement that would put an end to child abuse, repression and trafficking, one can only envision a happy and prosperous future for the country. Because if children were happy, educated and did not suffer deprivation, diseases and malnutrition, there would be no terrorism in the country.
Despite the success we have attained in immunization, because of the commitment of the agencies concerned and use of radio and television for dissemination of information, the children of the country suffer inexorably. Presumably, penicillin and vaccines are no antidote to the abuse, neglect and denial of opportunity to these teeming millions who continue to lead a life of misery, squalor and exploitation because they were born poor. The war to be waged in our country is to force the affluent section of the society to pay more attention to the needs of these neglected youngsters having no families, no parents and no support. Unless we can affirm the right of the children to a life free from exploitation, neglect and abuse, guaranteeing access to food, healthcare, and education and ensuring protection, our commitment to democracy and national prosperity will remain a distant dream to be realised.
Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET. e-mail : [email protected]