77,203 more children turned bread earners in nine years: BBS

Infographic: TBS

The number of children engaged in different works has reached around 1.7 million, reflecting an increase of 77,203 children in the past nine years, according to a recent survey conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

However, children's involvement in hazardous works has decreased significantly, according to the "National Child Labour Survey - 2022", unveiled at the BBS auditorium in the capital yesterday.

The study surveyed children aged 5-17 years. Before the latest survey, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics conducted a research on child labour in 2013.

The number of children involved in hazardous works was around 12.80 lakh in 2013, which dropped to 10.68 lakh in 2022. However, the number of children deployed in non-hazardous sectors has increased from 4.18 lakh to 7.07 lakh during the same period, according to the survey.

The Bureau of Statistics said the total percentage of child labourers increased from 4.30% to 4.40% in nine years, while the percentage of children doing hazardous work dropped from 3.20% to 2.70%.

Children living in villages are more likely to get involved in hazardous jobs than those in cities, said the survey.

Concerned officials said the number of child labourers has increased due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides, the current global recession, along with a number of social, political, and habitual factors have also contributed to the rise in child labourers.

Ehsan-E-Elahi, secretary of the labour and employment ministry, said the increase in the number of working children was not much compared to the population growth rate.

"It was a matter of hope that we were able to reduce the number of child labourers in hazardous works," he added.

Earlier initiatives were taken to remove child labourers from work, but the lack of any system to rehabilitate them acted as an obstacle to reduce their number. Without such a system, children stay away from jobs for a few months, but later they return to work, said officials concerned.

Ehsan-E-Elahi said, "We have taken a project involving Tk2,500 crore to rehabilitate working children. If they continue to study in schools, they will get financial support throughout his school years. It will be possible to permanently rehabilitate a working child in this way."

The increase of working children may hamper the government's goal of eliminating child labour completely by 2025. Besides, the survey did not include any information about children working at homes, said experts.

Md Matiar Rahman, director general of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, said, "It may not be possible to eliminate the problem completely, but it is possible to bring it to a stage where it can be said that there is no child labour in the country."

Planning Minister MA Mannan said, "Child labour mainly originates from income inequality, economic inequality, and exploitation. No child from rich or middle class families engages in work. The government is working to reduce poverty and inequality and thereby reduce child labour."

According to the National Child Labour Survey 2022, the number of children aged 5-17 years in the country was 39.96 million. Out of them, around 3.5 million were working children.

A sector wise division shows that around 1.08 million children were engaged in the agriculture sector, 1.19 million in the industrial sector, and around 1.27 million in the service sector.

The largest number of children engaged in hazardous work was in the industrial sector – around 6.50 lakh. Apart from that, 3.79 lakh children did hazardous jobs in the service sector and around 36,000 in the agricultural sector.