1.78m children engage in child labour: BBS

There are some 3.54 million working children aged 5-17 in Bangladesh with 1.76 million not in child labour while 1.78 million in child labour, including 1.07 million in hazardous child labour, according to the National Child Labour Survey 2022.

This was revealed at the "Report Dissemination Program of Establishment Based Sector-wise Working Children Survey-2023 and National Child Labour Survey-2022" held at the auditorium of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in the capital‍‍`s Agargaon area on Thursday.

State Minister for Planning Md Shahiduzzaman Sarker spoke at the Programme as the chief guest while Statistics and Informatics Division Secretary Dr Shahnaz Arefin spoke as special guest.

ILO Country Director Tuomo Poutiainen and Deputy High Commissioner of the British High Commission Matt Cannell spoke as the guests of honour.

Presided over by BBS director General Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, deputy director general of BBS Parimol Chandra Bose gave the address of welcome while deputy director of BBS Mohammad Saddam Hossain Khan made a power-point presentation on both the surveys.

Joint Secretary of the Statistics and Informatics Division Dipankar Roy moderated the question and answer session.

Speaking on the occasion as the chief guest, State Minister for Planning Md Shahiduzzaman Sarker said although the government does not claim that child Labour has come to zero level, but the government has firm optimism that child Labour would be eliminated from the country by 2025.

Statistics and Informatics Division Secretary Dr Shahnaz Arefin said that the government is working all through its every possible way to eliminate child Labour from the country by 2025.

ILO country director Tuomo said elimination of child Labour cannot be done without investing in education and to address child Labour, there is also a need to address poverty.

British deputy high commissioner to Bangladesh Matt Cannell said that urgent actions are needed to eliminate child Labour by 2025.

Former caretaker government adviser and eminent educationist Rasheda K Chowdhury suggested for increasing the amount of government stipends to students through making inflation adjustments and also to launch mid-day meals in schools to reduce child labour in the country.

The National Child Labour Survey 2022 is of utmost importance, especially in light of growing social concerns about child labour and international and national commit ments to eliminate it.

The National Child Labour survey covered 30,816 households in 64 districts, selected via the 2022 Population and Housing Census. Enumeration Area (EA) has 80-120 households. The survey was split into rural and urban domains and eight divisions. The questionnaire was divided into five modules with a significant focus on the problem of child labour.

The report said the total child population in this 5-17 age group is 39.96 million, with 55.2% belonging to the age group of 5 to 11 years. Out of the entire child population, 3.54 million are working children.

The report also highlights the distribution of the child population in different divisions, with Dhaka having the highest proportion of children. The number of households with children in this age group is 27.63 million, and the current school attendance rate is 34.81%.

It said out of 27.63 million households, 3.54 million of them having working children between the ages of 5 to 17. Working children are employed in various sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, construction, whole sale, retail, and transport. Some 60.8% of them are employees and 99% of them are informally employed. Some 60.7% of working children currently attend school. The average working hours of the child workers are 27.1 hours per week, and their average monthly income is TK 6661.

The report highlights that 82% of child labourers live in their own homes, with 33.3% employed in manufacturing and 23.6% in agriculture, forestry, and fishing. Overall, 68.8% of child labourers are categorized as employees with 52.2% attending school. The average monthly income of child labourers is TK 6675.

It said 7% of these children work with heavy loads sharp tools, and during nighttime hours.

In addition, there are 2.01 million child domestic workers who are not paid and 0.08 million who are paid, with females outnumbering males in both categories. The three primary sectors agriculture, industry, and service, employ 1.07 million, 1.19 million and 1.27 million child workers, respectively.

The government officially recognized and labeled 43 sectors as hazardous. Following consultations with various stakeholders, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics has selected five sectors from this government declared hazardous list for conducting the ‍‍`Establish- ment Based Sector Wise Working Children Survey-2023‍‍`.

According to the estimated results of the survey, there are 40,525 establishments and 38,008 children 5-17 years old working in the aforementioned sectors. Among all the children working in these hazardous sectors, 97.5% are boys and 2.5% are girls.

The total number children working in the five sectors is 898 in dry fish production, 5,281 in the Manufacturing of leather footwear, 4,099 in Welding works or gas burner mechanic, 24,923 in Automobile workshops, and 2,805 in Informal and local tailoring and clothing sectors respectively.

These numbers reveal that of the five hazardous sectors mentioned the largest incidence of working children is found in the automobile sector. A regional breakdown shows that 35.7% of children working in these sectors live in rural areas whereas 64.3% live in urban areas. The survey also allowed for the identification of specific hazardous activities that children working in these sectors engage in. Approximately 19.1% of boys and 7.7% of girls are engaged in the task of carrying, pushing, or pulling heavy loads.

Findings have brought to light that 51.4% of establishments in the five selected hazardous sectors pay child workers a monthly wage of Taka 5,000 or less, while 28.7% of these establishments offer wages of Taka 10,000 or less and only 1.4 % provide higher salaries or wages.