'1.7m child labourers in country'

The total number of child labourers in the country is 1.7 million, said Begum Monnujan Sufian, state minister for labour and employment citing the 2013 survey of the Bureau of Statistics.

Of them, a staggering 1.2 million children are engaged in hazardous work, she told the parliament on Wednesday.

She was replying to a question of Awami League lawmaker Habib Hasan, adding that as per the survey in 2003, the number of child labourers was 3.4 million.