Bonded Child Labour : A Curse...What is the Cure?

We are asking people to understand that slavery still exists today; in fact, according to a recent New York Times article, if you count the number of women and children in bonded labour, domestic slavery or sexual slavery today, there are more slaves in the world than at any other time in history.

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The sight in the morning, the children going to schools well dressed, with happy mood with a promise of future profile, perhaps this may please every one; the home, society and nation.

In contrary, there are children forcibly extracted work, their movements are restricted, malfunctioned and their playing times are robbed and they do not know what time it is for their breakfast lunch and supper. They have to toil….toil…..toil….from sunrise to sunset. Their future is a total question mark.

The children in the tender age are subjected to sexual abuse by their male chauvinists irrespective of age of the abuser be it man of twenty or fifty. There are more chances children becoming victims of incurable diseases such AIDS, lung cancer and just pubescent girls becoming unwed pregnant with clandestine abortion resulting in loss of life often. The adolescent boys under homosexuality for an epidemic spread of AIDS.

The UNICEF furnishes the following statistics:

“An estimated 158 million children aged 5-14 are engaged in child labour - one in six children in the world. Millions of children are engaged in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, around one in three children are engaged in child labour, representing 69 million children.

In South Asia, another 44 million are engaged in child labour.

The latest national estimates for this indicator are reported in Table 9 (Child Protection) of UNICEF's annual publication The State of the World's Children.

Children living in the poorest households and in rural areas are most likely to be engaged in child labour. Those burdened with household chores are overwhelmingly girls. Millions of girls who work as domestic servants are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

Labour often interferes with children’s education. Ensuring that all children go to school and that their education is of good quality are keys to preventing child labour”.

The document-debt bonded laborers are always under mental trauma, under the threat of contractors. With all these problem the question lies how to decimate the menace?

Whose responsibilities lay first, the societies’, or nations’? Are the NGOs honest in their efforts without malpractice? Is the cruelty is in decrease, or increase? Is it irredeemable?

This forum has to be discussed widely and should have a constructive programme with earnest humanity.