Untitled - Terre des Hommes

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The average hiring age in Dhaka’s leather tanneries is twelve, but many younger children can also be found working in this industry. A majority of the children have come from villages looking for work or escaping an abusive situation. Some are alone in Dhaka and so live and work at the tanneries. They typically work more than eight hours per day, use chemicals and sharp knives, work in large turning barrels used for dyeing the leather and on the unsecured roofs used for drying purposes. 35 In Fatullah, an industrial area found on the outskirts of Dhaka, children from the age of ten can be found working in the metal and melamine works and in a steel mill. These children work without protective gear, with large machines that have moving parts, with large ovens at high temperatures, handling sharp metal and while breathing in chemicals and dust. Officially they work in eight-hour shifts, but as pay is on an hourly basis and there is little monitoring, children work as much as they need to or as much as they can. In Fatullah, children are also working at an extremely hazardous iron re-rolling factory, where scrap iron from places such as the ship-breaking yards is cut down, melted in huge kilns and rolled into usable rods. The conditions here are so intense that shifts are officially two-and-a-half hours long and workers are given regular showers throughout to cool down. As well as the hot kilns, workers handle saws, welding equipment and large machinery. Some wear protective glasses and gloves. 36 Children can also be found in Fatullah working in welding workshops, cutting iron rods, doing heavy lifting and welding, often without any proper protective glasses or equipment. In Rongpur, boys start this type of work at age nine, often working more than twelve hours a day, and earning as little as 20 to 60 taka per week initially. After a few years of welding work they generally suffer from sore and irritated eyes and chest pain. 37 There are an estimated 150,000 workers in Bangladesh's bidi industry, mostly focused around the Rongpur area, in Northern Bangladesh. An estimated 60 - 70%, of the 800 to 900 employees, in one such bidi factory in Rongpur are children. The employees sit on the floor in cramped and unhealthy working conditions breathing in tobacco dust from 9am to 5pm each day. They earn 22 taka per 1000 completed bidis and average about 5000 bidis per person per day. The factory owners prefer employing children as they apparently work faster than the adults. 38 Fisheries employ children from the age of eight to work at fish-processing and sales sites. Typically work starts at 4am, stops for a few hours around noon, and then starts again after lunch. Children unload boats, carrying baskets of up to 50 kg and wash the fish. Their wages of about 50 taka per eight to ten hour shift are typically paid to their parents. In the Sundarbans mangrove forests, children collect shrimp in particularly dangerous conditions; children tie themselves to trees by the neck to avoid getting washed away by the strong current. Children are also tasked with separating the head and legs of the shrimp, categorizing the shrimp by body size in preparation for export to European, American and Middle-Eastern markets. There are an estimated three million workers in Bangladesh's fish industry. 39 The vast majority of child labour in Bangladesh takes place within the agricultural sector 40 . Work in agriculture is not seen as inherently hazardous, but nevertheless, often is, depending on the 35 Visit to tanneries and interviews with tannery owners and employees 36 Visit to Fatullah and interviews with workshop owners and employees 37 Visit to welding workshops in Fatullah and Rongpur, interviews with owners and employees 38 Visit to bidi factory in Rongpur, interviews with owner and employees 39 Mr. S.R. Chowdhury and Mr. M. Khorshed (Prodipan) 40 Mr. Sharfuddin Khan (ILO) 26
conditions of the work and the work being done 41 . Tasks can include ploughing and planting and spraying pesticides and fertilizers. Without proper protective equipment, about 30% of the sprayed chemicals are inhaled. Agricultural work is done from sunrise until sunset all year round. Work in agriculture begins early in life; from the age of eight young children go to school and work during holidays to supplement income and somewhat older children work full time. There are different forms of employment within agriculture; contract-based workers get paid for completing a certain task, whereas day labourers receive a daily salary. 42 4. Interventions a. Government initiatives The National Time Bound Programme is a combined Government of Bangladesh and ILO initiative to address child labour. ILO has been working on child labour in Bangladesh since 1995. Initially they ran small projects, but in 2000 larger projects targeting specific sectors - domestic, bidi, trafficking and the urban informal economy - were launched. The decision was made to move away from this sectorconstrained project-focused approach in 2004 and to design a more comprehensive approach. The Time Bound Programme (TBP) was developed to address the root causes of child labour and to focus on specific areas of impact, including advocacy, education, legal reform, poverty alleviation, and the rural and urban informal economies. The TBP preparatory phase was completed in 2006 and the first programme focusing on the urban informal economy has been running since 2007. The urbaninformal-economy programme targets 10,000 children involved in hazardous labour in Dhaka. Under the management of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, the TBP is being carried out by the Dhaka City Corporation and numerous NGOs to provide skills development, non-formal education and social and economic support in the form of micro-credit loans. 43 The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper – II (PRSP-II) 44 recognises child labour both as a social and an economic issue. One goal of PRSP-II is the preparation for a code of conduct; a regulation regarding minimum wage and protective standards for health, leisure, and education for working children. Another goal is to provide working children with access to learning opportunities in formal and nonformal facilities. It sets out explicit targets and actions for children who are abused physically, sexually, through trafficking and who remain socially stigmatized and ostracized. The interventions are meant to include community-support development for working children. The government has recently stated its commitment to the consideration of the ratification of ILO Convention 138, which establishes a minimum working age. Convention 138 was designed to ensure the effective abolition of child labour. This convention unambiguously links the minimum age of work to the compulsory age of education (Mondal, 2009). There are a number of other stakeholders involved in child labour in Bangladesh. The Department of the Inspectorate is responsible for the monitoring of child labour laws within the formal sector. They are however seriously understaffed, with only thirty inspectors for the whole country 45 . The government, with the cooperation of 76 implementing partner NGOs, is targeting another 50,000 children engaged in hazardous labour in 18 districts around the country, providing them rehabilitation, non-formal education and skills training 46 . Some progress regarding the sexual 41 Mr. Sharfuddin Khan (ILO), Ms. Gita (Ain O Salish Kendra), 42 Interviews with children in Tangail and Rongpur 43 Mr. Sharfuddin Khan (ILO), Mr. Asgar Ali (Ministry of Labour and Employment) 44 FY 2009-11 45 Mr. Sharfuddin Khan (ILO) 46 Mr. Asgar Ali (Ministry of Labour and Employment) 27
Page 2 and 3: Stichting Terre des Hommes Nederlan
Page 4 and 5: 6. List of respondents ............
Page 6 and 7: Introduction This report is based o
Page 8 and 9: Legal analysis of child labour The
Page 10 and 11: (ILO, Targeting the Intolerable, 19
Page 12 and 13: Prohibiting prostitution is require
Page 14 and 15: depend on police force, but also on
Page 16 and 17: Optional Protocol to the Convention
Page 18 and 19: It is still the norm culturally for
Page 20 and 21: children in Bangladesh can be descr
Page 22 and 23: The road to sex work In both floati
Page 24 and 25: heterosexual man may also have sex
Page 28 and 29: exploitation of children also appea
Page 30 and 31: Child Advocacy Forum and Bangladesh
Page 32 and 33: themselves 57 . Policy changes at t
Page 34 and 35: Interviews with members of the Hori
Page 36 and 37: Various social trends and their sub
Page 38 and 39: fine. Whoever ostensibly procures a
Page 40 and 41: households with child domestic labo
Page 42 and 43: exploited, as there is no fear of p
Page 44 and 45: older they move on to better paying
Page 46 and 47: The Indian government's focus on ed
Page 48 and 49: The government needs to disseminate
Page 50 and 51: Interviews with children and famili
Page 52 and 53: International, indicates that 60% o
Page 54 and 55: The new constitution (2007) prohibi
Page 56 and 57: stranded in an unknown environment.
Page 58 and 59: They work with machetes, exposing t
Page 60 and 61: and diseases. An adult earns Bs60-1
Page 62 and 63: According to CNNA, people under the
Page 64 and 65: There is a need to raise awareness
Page 66 and 67: Sucre Sister Cira, Centro Santa Clo
Page 68 and 69: violence can leave children without
Page 70 and 71: at 4 hours a day. Children between
Page 72 and 73: Human trafficking is a definite rea
Page 74 and 75: absence of specialized knowledge ab
Page 76 and 77:
psychoactive substances. Unfortunat
Page 78 and 79:
children with no interest in ending
Page 80 and 81:
Alejandro Cussianovich Villaran, MA
Page 82 and 83:
to access schools in their new situ
Page 84 and 85:
The working day for child domestic
Page 86 and 87:
d. Hazardous work: work which, by i
Page 88 and 89:
5. Recommendations by respondents A
Page 90 and 91:
Kenya National Bureau of Statistics
Page 92 and 93:
Tanzania 1. Introduction and backgr
Page 94 and 95:
Children are forbidden from working
Page 96 and 97:
According to ILO (ILO 2006) estimat
Page 98 and 99:
officials since legislation is offi
Page 100 and 101:
ILO/IPEC. 2003. Facts on Child Dome
Page 102 and 103:
street children, incidence of domes
Page 104 and 105:
government has become aware of the
Page 106 and 107:
4. Interventions Government initiat
Page 108 and 109:
5. Recommendations by respondents T
Page 110 and 111:
7. List of respondents Kampala: Ans
Page 112 and 113:
Secondly, poverty is often cited as
Page 114 and 115:
organisations. The Indian state Goa
Page 116 and 117:
Recommendations A constant improvem
Page 118 and 119:
Annex List of topics and questions
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