Covid-19, cheaper labour and the endless miseries of our children
Children are our most precious assets—for some, in a very literal sense. For money, for sustenance, for survival, many parents unable to bear poverty end up pushing their precious little ones into the wide open in search of subsistence. Children as young as three-four end up in the informal sector, doing menial jobs, for a tiny sum of money.
According to The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action ("The Alliance")—a global network of operational agencies, academic institutions, policymakers, donors and practitioners that facilitates inter-agency technical collaboration on child protection in all humanitarian contexts—152 million children worldwide are involved in child labour and nearly half of them, around 73 million, are engaged in hazardous jobs.
Covid-19 is only going to exacerbate the problem. A blog posted by Unicef suggests that, "As global poverty rises, so too will the prevalence of child labour. Increased parental mortality due to Covid-19 will force children into child labour, including the worst forms such as work that harms the health and safety of children. Temporary school closures may have permanent implications for the poorest and most vulnerable. Limited budgets and reductions in services for families and children will compound the effects of the health, economic, and social crisis."
Even in case of a short-lived economic crisis, "the consequences of this increase in child labour can last generations. We know that children who enter child labour are unlikely to stop working if their economic situation improves. Instead, they will continue to experience the consequences of child labour—like less education overall and worse employment opportunities—when they are adults and start families of their own. We also know that the younger children are when they start working, the more likely they will experience chronic health issues as adults. Moreover, we have ample evidence that stress and trauma in adolescence lead to a lifetime of mental health challenges," the blog further suggests.
While the possibility of a meteoric rise in forced child labour is a concern for the world community, for countries like Bangladesh—where, according to the UK-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS), around 87 percent of the population are involved in the informal economy and around 1.2 million children are already involved in the "worst forms of child labour"—the challenges ahead are manifold.
The Child Domestic Workers (CDW) remain a major problem of the informal employment sector. From toddlers to juveniles, girls and boys of all ages are employed in various households across the country as domestic workers. And these children are subjected to all forms of abuse and exploitation, from meagre wages and inhumane living conditions to sexual assault by employers and battery, leading to death in some cases. These are some of the myriad problems facing these children.
Despite the government having formed the Domestic Workers Protection and Welfare Policy (DWPWP) 2015 and amended the Labour Act 2013, the miseries of Child Domestic Workers remain unaddressed. The policymakers' inability to align the discrepancy of the age bar for employability of these little workers in the DWPWP and the Labour Act—according to DWPWP, the minimum age is set at 12, whereas as per Labour Act, the minimum age is 14—is a manifestation of their apathy towards this situation.
Then, there are boys and girls who work in various other segments of the informal economy: in factories, workshops, shops, tanneries and other small jobs. These children are not only often exposed to hazardous materials and chemicals, but they also fail to access basic necessities such as nutrition, healthcare and education. And the wages they are paid are more often than not meagre and insufficient. The lucky ones can enrol for afternoon, evening or even at times weekend classes, and end up with a basic diploma in polytechnics or a BA pass course, but their prospect of a better, prosperous future remains remote.
The street children—defined by Unicef as "any girl or boy who has not reached adulthood, for whom the street (in the broadest sense of the word, including unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, etc.) has become her or his habitual abode and/or sources of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, supervised or directed by responsible adults"—remain the most vulnerable group.
These children are often involved in rag-picking, begging and other such tasks and miserably exploited by the people who employ them. Those involved in rag-picking are the most vulnerable, because they are prone to getting infected with various infectious and communicable diseases, thanks to the mismanagement of medical waste. Especially in the current situation, these children are at greater risk of being infected with Covid-19 because of the way we handle medical waste, especially outside the capital.
And with the nation's economic wheels slowing down due to Covid-19, these children are at a greater risk of exploitation by unscrupulous employers. Increasing poverty, loss of income, lack of jobs, and death of wage earners in the family are rending many of these children—born into poverty—easy prey for employers. With the equilibrium in the demand-supply equation of available child labour tilting towards the employers, it is the little children who will be the collateral damage.
The government must take appropriate and effective economic, social and legal measures to protect the children from becoming the "other victims" of Covid-19. The government, while expanding the social safety schemes to cover a wider group of people, can also expand its education programmes to properly accommodate the street children, giving them a better chance at life. The policies dealing with forced child labour should also be implemented strongly so that unscrupulous people are not able to exploit our children. Crafting narratives just one day a year—on the occasion of World Day Against Child Labour—is easy; what's not is the political will and its strong demonstration to truly eliminate this socio-economic menace.
Our children need our attention, especially in this unprecedented juncture of life.
Tasneem Tayeb is a columnist for The Daily Star.
Her Twitter handle is: @TayebTasneem
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