Following the death of her husband, a woman had sent her only child to work in a carpentry shop. But the child named Md Shafayet Islam didn’t like his job.
At the age of 11, he left home in Louhajang upazila of Munshiganj and came to capital’s Sadarghat towards the start of 2020. Now he sells cheap packaged food for children on Barishal-bound launches.
Once his father died and his mother got remarried, there was no place for Md Rony in the family anymore. In Rony’s words, he was beaten and driven out of the house when he was just six or seven years old.
He then took the train from Natore to the capital. Now he sleeps on a van-rickshaw parked in front of a shop named ‘Four Star Traders’ at Karwan Bazar and collects discarded plastic bottles to sell.
Sumaiya (9) sells balloons at Gulshan-2 square in the capital. The child living in Kamalapur area said her father Haidar Ali also sells balloons nearby. She returns home with her father every evening.
Being deprived of education and security because of poverty, these children start taking their own responsibility right from early childhood. They even have to face all sorts of various repression.
World Day Against Child Labour is being observed today, 12 June, with the aim of protecting these children by removing them from labour. The theme this year is, ‘Social Justice for All, End Child Labour!’
The ‘Survey on Street Children 2022’, published by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and Unicef last March showed that 30 per cent of the surveyed street children lives in the open while, 36 per cent never went to school.
Around 91 per cent of the street children are engaged in labour. A total of 7,200 street children aged between 5 and 17 from eight divisions of the country had taken part in the survey. And, 49 per cent of them reside in Dhaka.
Victims of violence, inadequate security
On 29 May, a street child named Sumon died when a steel rod dropped from the under-construction elevated expressway in Mohakhali and went through his head.
On the same day, police rescued four street children aged 13 or 14 years from a tin-shed near Ishaq depot toll plaza in Chattogram’s Bandar police station. They were being forced into sex work with promises of shelter and work.
Meanwhile at Karwan Bazar, Rony said that two days ago some addicted youth woke him up at midnight, beat him and snatched away the Tk 200 he had earned working the whole day.
Young Shafayet from Shawarighat said that in exchange for a daily toll of Tk 60, ‘Lathi Bahini’, a local gang in the dockyard area allows him to sell food there.
The BBS survey report stated that 50 per cent of the street children have confirmed that they become victim of violence while working. The rate of repression in the hands of pedestrians is the highest, 83 per cent.
It had been said in the report that more than one-third of the street children are addicted to smoking and drugs.
Unicef’s child protection officer Fatema Khyrunnahar told Prothom Alo, these children remaining outside of parental monitoring are falling victim to violence. Girl children are at higher risk.
There’s no coordination among the activities involving street children on the government level, neither is there enough social workers, she added.
Less keen about rehabilitation centres
The department of social services has six centres for street children while the ministry of women and children affairs has two more.
Rony had fled from the rehabilitation centre for street children at Karwan Bazar, run by the women and children affairs ministry. When asked about the reason of fleeing he said, “They don’t let us out.”
Visiting the centre on 4 June, street children were found watching television together in a large room. A total of 40 boys live in the centre able to house 80.
Manger of the centre Afroza Akhter said that children living there have to live within rules and regulations and must attend school. So, many street children don’t like living there.
As per the BBS survey, even less than three per cent of the children respondents actually live in rehabilitation centres.
Meanwhile, 72 per cent of them have confirmed that they do not want to live there because of the strict rules and less chance of smoking or meeting with friends.
Families force them to work
Many children are also forced into working by their families. Two nine or ten-year-old children deliver food from a restaurant to different offices and shops in Karwan Bazar.
They said they were sent to work by their own families. They used to go to school in their village before coming to work here.
A shopkeeper said parents send these children to work, speaking of their poverty. Plus, it cost lesser to employ them.
According to BBS’s latest National Child Labour Survey 2013, about 1.75 million (17.5 lakh) are involved in child labour. The government has set up a goal to eliminate child labour within 2025.
Md Emran Khan, assistant director at the department of social services, which is the focal point of CSPB project phase-2 activities said, instead of keeping children confined in their centres there is the option for them to go out as required.
Social workers work to raise awareness against driving children out of home due to any family reason or engaging them in child labour. As many as 25 more hubs will be set up across the country and the number of social workers will be increased from 200 to 500, he added.
Mindset change needed
Executive director INCIDIN Bangladesh AKM Masud Ali told Prothom Alo that street children are seen as a community of dirty, disease-carrying criminals. This mindset needs to be changed and initiatives taken to ensure their proper childhood under the responsibility of the state.
They have to be encouraged to move away from the misguided path with informal education and skill development. And initiatives revolving around them have to be given a permanent form instead of just project-based, he added.