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SETTING THE AGENDA ON CHILD LABOUR IN THE BANGLADESH GARMENT INDUSTRY
(by Shirin e Farida Akhter)
It is true that there are about 300,000 children aged 8-14, mainly girls, working in garment factories. They usually accompany their mothers and sisters as they cannot stay at home alone and cannot go to school because of poverty. Women have had to seek employment outside their homes and villages because of increasing poverty, landlessness, insecure economic and social conditions. The newly established export oriented garments industry has offers them one of their main sources of employment.
In the United States Senator Tom Harkin proposed a bill in Congress called the Child Labour Deterrence Act of 1992, to prohibit the importation of any product made wholly or in part by children under the age of 15. This was at a time when Bangladesh had become the largest exporter of ready made garments to the US. The US trade protectionist lobby was acting to protect US business interest groups. They asked for a consumer boycott of Bangladesh garments in 1995.
The Harkins Bill has had serious implications for employment patterns, leading to a rapid move to retrench girls below the age of 15. A Memorandum of Understanding signed by the employers association involved educational provision but this is not impacting on teenage girls being retrenched. Since neither the families nor the girls themselves are being compensated they may be forced into much more pemicious and exploitative areas of work, including child prostitution. In any case the Bill is only applicable to the export sector and cannot address the problem of child workers in the rest of the economy.
Activists here argue that Bangladesh should not rely on the North for influencing social issues rather they should be addressed by ourselves so that we can focus on the issues that are important in the context of our own socio-economic circumstances.
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