IMAGES speak louder than words do. The pictures of young boys peppered in white powder in yesterday's issue of this newspaper tell us a tale that we wish were not there at all. And we say that because of all the endless litany of sadness we have come across all these years about the sufferings of the poor and the helpless. As our report puts it, one could be quite mistaken into thinking that these boys had just come through a snowfall. The truth is something else: they happen to be working for a balloon factory all day and well into the evening for a pittance, which means something between Tk. 150 and Tk. 300 a week at 14 hours a day. If ever there was reason to imagine man's inhumanity to his fellow beings, here it is. And don't let go of the fact that these boys are of an age when they should be playing with the balloons rather than helping to manufacture them. Such are the economic compulsions that often lay lives waste in this country.
The consequences of such work on the part of these children (and one can be sure there are lots of others like them across Bangladesh) are not only that they are deprived of a childhood but also, and more crucially, that their health is rendered vulnerable through all this exposure to chemicals and other materials. In course of time, their health will begin to show symptoms of decline in some pointed ways. In the first place, the long hours of work, with only meagre wages to carry back home at the end of the week, will surely have a toll on their physical well-being. In the second, it is their lungs and other bodily organs which will in time get affected to an extent where antibiotics and other forms of treatment will not work. In a nutshell, unless measures are taken to lift these boys out of the bind they are in, their future is as good as doomed. Which is when it becomes necessary for us to mull over the ways in which the government as well as the collective body of citizens can look to the means of salvaging these boys, and others like them, from their misery. One well understands the worries (and they are ours too) about the dark aspects of child labour. At the same time, in a society like ours, there are the economic compulsions which push boys to the workplace at a tender age. But such work need not be in the way we see it every day. There must be better ways of reassuring these vulnerable young that they do have a future.
That reassurance can come through practical steps being taken to impart education to them. Along with that must come opportunities for vocational training that can prepare them for the future. It is here that the government has a role to play. And, of course, there is the matter of corporate social responsibility that must come in. With myriad NGOs operating in the country, there must be ways of assisting these children out of what is a modern-day version of slavery. Unless their lives change for the better, images of horror will mar our journey into the future.