Essay on Child Labour in Bangladesh

Many children are found engaged in different kinds of labor. If you walk along a city road or street you are bound to come across wich children. Some are engaged in the welding shops, or metalwork, and some are running after the loaded cart, or some are hammering rods at the site of new construction. It is an inhuman state of things. It is a shame for a country. But unfortunately, we have this disgraceful problem.

The spectacle of child labor presents a gruesome sight. Children are found engaged in labors jobs in different sectors of our labor. Even babies of 6-8 years of age are found as laborers, if we take for granted the children 10-12 years, and adolescents of 13-18 years, as laborers in different places.

Most often children are found engaged as house-servant. The people who engage them take undue advantage of their minor age and their helpless conditions. They have to work about eighteen hours a day, from early morning to midnight. They are not allowed any recess let alone recreation or amusement. In case of their slightest fault or negligence of duty, they are dealt with flagrant abuse and revilement. Very often they are punished with atrocious brutality. Sometimes they die from the injuries of the brutal punishment for a slight offense. Most often, even if they are not punished brutally, they are denied the basic needs of life. Though religion instructs people to give the same food to their servants as they eat, or the same kind of clothing as they use, the same kind of bed as they lie in, they ignore these instructions. They gave them rotten food to eat, worn-out clothes to wear, and just a mat on the floor for a bed, and a dirty pillow, and no mosquito net to prevent the mosquitoes from sucking their blood through the night. When they get up in the morning or rather driven out of their so-called bed, their face and body are found swollen with red spots of mosquito bites. They are under-nourished; grow up in ill health, with underdeveloped minds and brains.

Child laborers are found also in hotels, shops, and factories. There also they receive inhuman treatment from their masters and employers. They are often compelled to work for a longer period than an adult laborer for the fact that they do have not enough strength to complain. Sometimes their work in some factories is dangerous, and doing such work involves them in injuries, sometimes of serious nature, so serious that they become disabled for life. In such a case, they are simply discharged from their job, with no com-pension at all.

Children are found engaged in work in various other places. They break bricks and stones; carry bricks and other building material from one place to another. Some are found as street hawkers, rickshaw pullers, newspaper hawkers, and car-cleaners. In various railway stations, and launch ghats they are found as posters. In all such places, they are generally treated more inhumanly and cruelly are generally treated more inhumanly and cruelly than the adult labors are treated.

All such pitiable sights of child labor should arouse compassion and sympathy in us, should arouse in us strong hatred towards the barbarous way the children are treated.

The cause of child labor may be found embedded in different factors. Bangladesh is a poor country with geographical size of about 56000 square miles of population per square mile is the highest in the world. With the increase of population cultivable lands are being divided into fragments continuously. The cultivators are becoming poorer and poorer every year. A large number of people have become landless. They cannot maintain their family. They cannot think of sending their children to schools. They are compelled to send their children for earning. Thus, their children become day laborers.

Since it is a serious problem for our country, measures should be found out to prevent serious consequences in the future. A country whose population remains uneducated, cannot prosper satisfactorily. If a large portion of the child population of our country remains engaged in manual labor, who will take the helm of the nation after a decade or two? So all the sections of our people, as well as our government, should come up with measures to solve this ignoble problem. First of all, child labor can be stopped by law, and at the same time, the government should take proper care of the helpless children. Some measures in this direction have already been taken. But they are not being fully effective. Still, many children are being found as child laborers in different workplaces. Secondly, a law should also be passed for preventing oppression of the children, even by parents. There should be a provision for punishing even parents for torturing children. Thirdly, Zakat should be paid by the rich people from a conscientious realization of the problem.

Child labor is a national problem. It is not a problem for a family. The whole nation should come forward with different measures to solve it.

Essay on Child Labour in Bangladesh

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