By Md. Hasenur Rahman

Dhaka, Jan. 18 — Bangladesh, a nation with an audacious vision 2021, where the ruling party is committed towards digitization of the whole country within the next 10-13 years, it is rather unfortunate that even in between all this process of technological advancement and development, some of the key problems of the country are still being overlooked and yet to be identified; problems that might prove to be almost insurmountable later on. One such is the child labor problem in Bangladesh.

Increasing child labor is a core problem in Bangladesh. According to a recent study by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), it is estimated that almost 7.4 million children between the age group of 5 and 17 years are economically active, and out of this about 400,000 of them are child domestic workers (CDW) who are between the age group of 6 and 17 years.

Fuelled by poverty, low school enrollment, lack of government oversight and greedy employers, Bangladesh, along with India, Myanmar, Brazil, China and the Philippines has been placed in the ‘top six countries’ linked to individual products that use child for forced labor according to a recent U.S Government report.

Children in Bangladesh face violations of children’s rights such as discrimination and various forms of abuse and exploitation. Poverty remains the single most influential factor for the degraded state of children in Bangladesh. Even the NGOs and other organizations are not very much interested to create opportunities for the street child labor. The majority of street-involved children are engaged in various forms of informal income generation in order to contribute to the household economy or for personal survival.

The current government has promised to establish an independent child rights commission that will act as the defender of children. But in a country where just under half the population lives below the poverty line it will take decades rather than a year before child labour is fully eradicated.