Underage working children

An extensive study covering 2,700 households titled "Child labour and education: a survey of slum settlements in Dhaka" was published on December 7 by the London-based Overseas Development Institute. The findings paint a dismal picture where about 45 percent slum children enter the workforce by the time they turn 14. Although Bangladesh has made great progress on a number of human development indicators including education, economic hardship and poor quality of education in slum areas are some of the reasons for such high dropouts. When we take into account the general economic plight families living in slums experience, coupled with a failure at policy level to ensure school attendance, the reasons are not difficult to comprehend as to why slum children are missing out on learning numeracy and literacy skills.

Unless steps can be taken to stop this massive outflow of children from the education system, it could end up jeopardising the country's prospects of achieving Bangladesh's 2030 development goals. A strong education is the backbone of any economy and with the child labourers having an education of not having completed more than Grade-3 will have an adverse impact in the years to come. 

The only way to fight against child labour is if we keep our children in schools till they finish secondary education. We need to make education compulsory through strict enforcement. This means new laws and their enforcement to keep children in school. This must go hand in hand with making it very expensive through fines on industries that employ underage working children.