The High Court on Sunday ordered the government to take appropriate steps to stop usury against bonded child labour in practice in the coastal areas victimising fishermen.
The vacation bench of Justice Md Imman Ali and Justice Obaidul Hasan also ordered the labour and employment ministry to stop in a year the production of bidi, traditional hand-made low-cost cigarettes, outside factories, engaging child labourers in houses in Haragachh villages of Rangpur.
In the verdict given on a public interest litigation writ petition filed in 2004, the court ordered the government to amend the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 as it had found inadequate the provision for compensation for child labour and punishment for breach of rules by factory owners who employ child labour.
It also asked the government to pay cash incentives equivalent to wages foregone to the poor child labourers, who would attend schools leaving his factory.
The programme of compulsory and free primary education is not enough to take child labourers to schools from factories, the court observed.
After a preliminary hearing in the writ petition filed by rights organisations Ain o Salish Kendra and Aparajeya Bangla, the High Court on April 3, 2004 issued a rule asking the government to explain its failure to ensure health of children employed in bidi factories in Rangpur.
The organisations filed the writ petition on the basis of reports published in the daily Ittefaq on October 5, 2003 and in the daily Jugantor on January 15, 2004 which said more than 15,000 children had been engaged at Maya and Aziz bidi factories in an unhygienic condition.
Bangladesh ratified the ILO Convention 182, convention related to the prohibition of and immediate action for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour, in March 2001 and then started implementation of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour programme, which aims at progressive elimination of child labour in general.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics conducted two rounds of household child labour survey in 1996 and 2003. According to the surveys, there were 4.9 million working children (14.2 per cent) in the age group of 5–14 years of the total 35.06 million children.
According to Bangladesh Shishu Adhikar Forum, in Bangladesh, children are involved in 430 works and among them 67 works are identified as the most hazardous.
The bureau conducted multiple indicator cluster survey in 2009 in
which it collected data on children aged between 6 years and 14years, who do not go to school and are engaged in paid or unpaid work.
The survey shows that nationally, 2.3 per cent of children aged between 6 years and 14 years, who were not going to school, were engaged as child labourers.
According to the survey, 81.3 per cent of children of primary school age in Bangladesh were going to school.
