10/01/2010
Around 1000 people including 400 child domestic workers, 100 employers, parents from 6 divisions and others gathered today in Dhaka Bangladesh order to stress the need for initiatives to realize the rights of child domestic workers in the country.
Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), Together with Working Children (TWC) & Save the Children Sweden Denmark (SCSD), the organizations working for realization of children’s rights have jointly organized the first ever National Child Domestic Workers Convention on January 12, 2010 from 9:30am to 4:30pm at Osmani Memorial Auditorium.
The conference was designed to make recommendations to the government for establishing rights of the child domestic workers (CDW) in the country. Eng. Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, Honorable Minister, Ministry of Labour & Employment inaugurated the day long convention while Dr. Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, Honorable State Minister, Ministry of Women and Children Affairs concluded it. The entire convention was live casted on internet at the following site: http://www.scsd-bd.org/cdwc/.
The speakers said that the issue of Child domestic worker is the most neglected one in our society. Within the informal sector major segment of total working children are engaged in domestic works in our country and 80 % of them are girl child. There has been no significant discussion on the issue previously as it is mostly an invisible issue to many people. This convention was aimed to break the silence of the society and get attention from policy makers to take initiatives to protect the children engaged in domestic work from any form of violation and economic exploitation.
Child Labour is now a matter of great concern; the Government of Bangladesh has acknowledged the importance of child labour for long and has already adopted a National Children Policy in 1994 as a commitment to the promotion and protection of children's right. Bangladesh is one of the first countries to ratify the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1990 and ILO Convention 182 in 2001.
Children’s engagement in domestic work is one of the worst forms of child labour and it is widespread in Bangladesh. The actual number of domestic workers (children or adult) differs in the statistics of different sources. A survey by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in 1995 - 1996 shows that 14% out of a total of 6.298 million working children are domestic workers. According to a
Baseline survey (BBS and UNICEF 2006) there are approximately 400,000 child domestic workers (CDW) aged between 6-17 years in Bangladesh, of which around 1,32,000 are in Dhaka City alone. This estimation makes ‘Domestic Work by children’ as the single largest hazardous child labour sector in the country. Almost 80 percent of CDWs are girls. Approximately 94 percent of CDWs are full timers (24 hrs of work) and 6 percent work as part timers. This group of child workers is always cheap, invisible and they are the high risk group for common occurrence in Bangladesh.
What is alarming until now is that gender discrimination, exploitation practices and servitude of the child domestic workers remains unchallenged in the country. Considering the circumstances, it seems that means for protection of child domestic workers is very urgently needed.
Realizing this, SCSD decided to do a study on “Child Domestic Workers - living inside room & outside law and Role of Govt. & Civil Societies”. The Child Labour Theme of SCSD and Child Rights Unit of ASK did the study jointly. The major aim of this study was to make recommendations to the government and civil society for establishing rights of the child domestic workers on the basis of an analysis. The recommendation to overcome the situation of CDWs was drawn and declared through a workshop in the national convention.
Major recommendations declared by the children in the convention are as follows:
- We want the child domestic workers to be economically capacitated through education and skill development training. Non- hazardous job opportunities including general and special skills should be created in both urban and rural areas.
- Create access to income generating activities or jobs for our parents so that their income increases and they feel disinterested to send their child to city for jobs.
- We want that compulsory primary education should be implemented properly so our poor parents feel interested to send their children to school. Along with this, number of social protection schemes i.e. VGD, stipend for poor children, widow allowance, 100 days work etc. can be increased for family income and ensure primary education of children.
- We, the child domestic workers, remain under the custody of our employer all the time. That is why we want a ‘code of conduct’ for our employers. • Protect children from unsafe migration a registration system should be introduced at local government level.
- A law in favor of the domestic workers should be developed to protect them from exploitation.
- The Government of Bangladesh should immediately approve the “National Child Labour Eradication Policy” and take measures to implement it.