Dhaka, July 21:
Amid rising concerns over child abuse in Bangladesh, official helpline data revealed that the government-run child support service 1098 received 101 abuse-related calls from January to June 10, while emergency helpline 999 recorded 33 complaints of workplace child abuse until May, local media reported on Monday.
Citing a survey titled ‘Situation of Child Domestic Workers in Dhaka City’ conducted by Dhaka-based Action for Social Development (ASD), Bangladesh’s leading Bengali newspaper,
The Daily Ittefaq, reported that nearly 50 per cent of children engaged in domestic work in the capital face various forms of abuse, while 31.45 per cent are subjected to excessive workload.
Laila Khandaker, convener of child rights organisation ‘Shishurai Sab’, said that children employed in hotels, restaurants, transportation, brick kilns and various informal sectors endure long working hours every day, physical abuse, humiliation, unhygienic working conditions, low wages and, in many cases, non-payment of wages.
Khandaker said that the demand for child labour remains high because children are perceived as weak, easily controlled and unlikely to protest against abuse.
“We do not have much scope for monitoring in the institutional field. “And children do most of the work in the informal sector.
So they are victims of abuse in the workplace, and there is no remedy for it,” The Daily Ittefaq quoted her as saying.
Zakia Sultana, president of the Domestic Workers National Forum Bangladesh, said she began working as a domestic worker at the age of eight and endured various forms of abuse. She said that decades later, little has changed, as children as young as eight-year-olds from impoverished families continue to face similar abuse while working in households.
Referring to several cases of abuse involving child domestic workers, she said,
“We know that these incidents have been in the media and have been discussed. But even though we know that domestic worker children are constantly subjected to various types of abuse, including sexual harassment, when they come to work, we cannot stop them.”