If you never have been poor, you don’t have to work like this, from cold dawn to dusk.
What will you do when you see the underage kids working in brick industries?
In order to have foods or to live somewhere, they work.
These children come here in brick industry with their parents who work and make copious number of bricks. Yes, everyone needs a job/work for bread and butter. So, the people who are economically poor or from lower class family come to this place in every winter and live there in temporary huts for 5 to 6 months. And to resist from the cold, they out paddy straws on the roof which makes them warm.
During this time, the children go to nearby school and some of them do not. I don’t have any ideas whether it is because of their economic crisis or are their parents illiterate? Instead they work all day with their parents and play with other kids who also do not attend the school.
Few years ago, I visited this place as I walk around this brick industry area every year. I saw some underage girls were loading and carrying brick rubbles from the bunker to the other place. Fortunately, I got a chance to photograph them working. But, I couldn’t say anything about what they were doing.
They were probably from inner terai which is very far from Kathmandu valley where there are many problems regarding all aspects.
This year also, I visited around this place and did some photography stuffs. What I saw again was, there were still some underage kids working in brick industries. More will arrive soon. This cannot be denied to be honest.
They subsist on poor quality foods and at the same time, some of them skip their meals…..you know, I have seen and heard this kind of story. Most of them work from early in the morning till dusk. There is story behind it, you know, the more bricks they make, the more will be their remuneration or money.
Talking about their housing, they live in temporary huts where there is little space and cook foods and do other things in same room. This is little unbelievable for those who have not seen those huts in their life.
Child labour in Nepal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The incidence of child labour in Nepal is relatively high compared with other countries in South Asia.[1] According to data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) and other national surveys, Nepal has 34% of its children between the age of 5 and 14 who are involved in child labour, compared with 12% in the South Asia region as a whole.
There are more female than male child labourers, and the situation is worse in rural than urban areas. In 2010, 44% of children age 5 to 14 were involved in child labour activities in the mid- and far-western regions of Nepal. According to the Nepal Labour Force Survey (NLFS) in 2008, 86.2% of children who were working were also studying and 13.8% of the children work only. A comparison over the years of child labour force participation rate across gender and residence is shown in Table 1 below:
Table 1: Child Labour Force Participation Rates over time
Year Total Area of Residence Area of Residence
Total Male Female Urban Rural
1996[2]
41.7 36.1 47.6 23.0 43.4
2004[3]
32.0 30.2 32.5 12.4 33.9
2008[4]
33.9 30.2 37.8 14.4 36.7
2010[5]
44.0 41.0 48.0 31.0 46.0
Most children (60.5%) work up to 19 hours in 2008, while 32.2% worked 20 to 40 hours a week and 7.3% worked for more than 40 hours in a week. This trend is consistent in both rural and urban areas. In the 2003/2004 Nepal Living Standards Survey Statistical Report Volume II, it was found that children from the poorest consumption quintile has the highest percentage (18.7%) of children who worked for more than 40 hours a week as compared with the rest of the consumption quintile.
According to Ray (2004),[6] child schooling and child labour force participation rates are negatively correlated as there is a trade-off between the two variables. Thus, an increase in labour hours would mean lesser time for schooling, and lesser work hours equals to an increase in time spent for schooling.
Industries in which children work
The NLFS also found that 88.7% of the working children are being employed in the agricultural sector. 1.4% of employed children work in the manufacturing sector, 0.3% works in construction sector, 1.6% is employed in wholesale and retail trade, 1.0% works in hotels and restaurants, 0.1% are working in private households with employed persons, and 6.9% work in other types of industries. Those who are working in the agricultural sector are mostly subsistence farmers. About 78.1% of these working children are engaged in subsistence farming.
In 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that children in Nepal are engaged "in agriculture and the worst forms of child labor in commercial sexual exploitation".[7] The report indicated other industrial activities like mining and stone breaking, weaving, and domestic service. In 2014, the Department's List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor reported bricks, carpets, embellished textiles and stones as goods produced in such labor conditions by both child laborers and forced workers.
There are various INGOs and NGOs who are working and committed to securing social justice for children of Nepal. But it is going in slower rates and why? Some children of Nepal are forced into child labor by the poverty that obliges their parents to send them to work instead of attending school.
To sum it up, this is just an example of one or some children who are forced into child labor, not just of Brick Industries. There are so many places, they are being forced into child labor, for instances, public buses, restaurants, private houses of high classes, textiles industries, agricultural sectors, construction places etc. Yes, they are vulnerable children: who they are, where they live, and what puts them at risk…………
Do anybody help us, If yes………. when………?
References:
1. United Nations Children's Fund, Retrieved 28 January 2012.
2. Central Department of Population Studies, Tribhuvan University. (1997). Child Labour Situation In Nepal p.34. Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine., Retrieved 28 January 2012.
3. Government of Nepal, Central Bureau of Statistics, National Planning Commission Secretariat. (2004). Nepal Living Standard Survey 2003/04 Statistical Report Volume II p.53., Retrieved 18 January 2012.
4. "Government of Nepal, Central Bureau of Statistics, National Planning Commission Secretariat. (2009). Nepal Labour Force Survey 2008 Statistical Report p. 135. Archived February 14, 2012, at the Wayback Machine., Retrieved 28 January 2012.
5. Government of Nepal, Central Bureau of Statistics/The United Nations Children's Fund. (2011). Findings from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2010 in the Mid-and Far-Western Regions, Nepal p.14., Retrieved 28 January 2012.
6. Ray, R. (2004). Child Labour and Child Schooling in South Asia: A Cross Country Study of their Determinants., Retrieved 18 January 2012.
7. Nepal, 2013 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor
