Between Survival and Schooling: Rethinking Child Labour in Bangladesh

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has adopted a total of four hundred and seven international labour standards instruments. Of these, one hundred ninety-two  are Conventions, six are Protocols, and two hundred nine are Recommendations. The ILO has also categorised ten  fundamental Conventions, four Governance (Priority) Conventions, and one hundred seventy-eight Technical Conventions from the one hundred ninety-two conventions. The first country in Asia to achieve this milestone, Bangladesh has ratified a total of thirty-nine Conventions and one  Protocol, including all ten Fundamental Conventions.

Convention No. 138 is the most significant of the fundamental conventions, as it establishes a minimum age for employment that must not be less than fourteen years or equal to the age at which compulsory schooling concludes. The Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, in Chapter Five, categorises individuals under the age of fourteen as children and those between fourteen and eighteen as adolescents, in accordance with the conventional approach. The objective of this chapter is to protect the health, safety, and education of children while allowing adolescents to engage in regulated, non-hazardous employment. Regrettably, the chapter also stipulates that all provisions that apply to adolescent workers will, mutatis mutandis, apply to medically fit child workers, regardless of their age, even if they are at least twelve years old. A child over the age of twelve is lawfully permitted to work in Bangladesh, provided that they adhere to certain restrictions outlined in the laws.

A recent report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are 1.7 million child labourers in Bangladesh. The majority of these children are employed in cities, informal industries, agriculture, and ready-made garment (RMG) firms (ILO, 2021). The garment industry’s reliance on labour practices has been the subject of intense scrutiny in the country, accounting for approximately eighty-four per cent  of total export earnings (World Bank, 2021). The 2013 Rana Plaza Tragedy was a shock to the world and brought the issue of the unsafe conditions they work under, including underage workers, to the forefront. However, the attention they received after factories recruited them prompted some to question their prior activities and whether they were sent home when factories released workers in response to international pressure.

Despite the desire of parents to ensure the welfare of their children, Basu and Van (1998) offer an exceptional starting point for comprehending the rationale behind the persistence of child labour. Child labour is primarily a response to poverty, as parents send children to work only when adults’ income falls below the subsistence level. In Bangladesh, where a significant portion of the rural population lives close to subsistence thresholds, this framework has substantial explanatory power (World Bank, 2021). Children are a source of compensation in the high seasonal unemployment and river-erosion-affected regions of the north, such as Rangpur and Kurigram, where there is no other means to meet the family’s financial needs.

Nevertheless, the connections between child labour and education are intricate. In Bangladesh, Ravallion and Wodon (2000) conducted a recent analysis of a school stipend program. They discovered that providing an education subsidy decreased overall child labour, though the effect on increasing school attendance was less than anticipated. It is strongly implied that the educational system is unable to replace the function of children in the economic systems of many families. This practice, which transcends the “school or labour” binary, is neither a school feature nor a harmful factory function. Rather, it involves children being entrusted with the responsibility of caring for younger siblings while their parents are at work. Unintended consequences will probably occur if policy neglects to consider these factors. The European Union intended to terminate its trade preferences regarding child labour in the 1990s. This would have necessitated the closure of numerous export factories in the country, leading to the hiring of thousands of children. Additional research conducted under the auspices of UNICEF demonstrated that a significant number of children were subsequently employed in less visible, more hazardous occupations than they had been in school (Bhalotra & Heady, 2003).

Gender factors further complicate the scenario. In rural Bangladesh, the expectations of marriage and domestic work for girls may be as restrictive, if not more so, than official wage expectations. In certain families, the decision to permit a daughter to pursue a career in the garment industry in the city is an unusual one, as village families frequently opt for early marriage to the man who was spurned (Kabeer, 2000). This does not imply that child labour is permissible; rather, it implies that a significant amount of effort on child labour interventions will only serve to reinforce other forms of marginalisation while simultaneously addressing employment rates in the absence of awareness of the issues.

Remarkably, Bangladesh has made substantial strides. The country is surpassing most of its regional counterparts in gender parity in basic education, and the overall net primary enrolment rate has risen to ninety-seven per cent (UNESCO, 2021). The Bangladesh Labour Act, 2006, safeguards workers; however, child labourers in the informal sector continue to face obstacles in its implementation. The domestic sector, which employs highly vulnerable workers, such as children, and is poorly registered, lacks proactive auditing mechanisms that can identify breaches. Research indicates that economic incentives and effective law enforcement are essential for promoting change rather than moral influence (Davis & Pescott, 2006; Barrientos & Smith, 2007).

The dilemma is not solely a matter of financial pragmatism versus children’s rights. It is imperative to implement intervention strategies that are both candid and optimistic. There are more effective methods for expanding social protection coverage, more effective systems to prevent informality, superior financing for secondary education, and more effective trade policies that promote genuine change while allowing the informal sector’s core to persist. In the same vein, the Government of Bangladesh is also making strides in this direction in partnership with the ILO through the Country Programme on Decent Work; however, there are specific challenges to its implementation.

Progress has not been consistent or rapid enough, despite Bangladesh’s efforts to reduce child labour. For instance, the absence of viable alternative solutions that are realistically accessible to the children who continue to reside in tanneries in Hazaribagh and tobacco-processing units in Kushtia has prevented them from relocating. There is an imperative need to resolve the structural issue.

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