Photo: Collected
A survey conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics revealed 38,008 children, aged between 5 to 17 years, are working in five hazardous sectors across Bangladesh.
A majority of these children, precisely 97.5%, are male, reveals the Child Labor Survey 2023 released on Thursday (14 March).
The Government of Bangladesh has officially recognised 43 sectors as hazardous, but the BBS, after consultations with stakeholders, chose to focus on five key sectors for this survey.
These sectors were selected based on their prevalence of child workers and the urgent need for intervention.
The sectors are fish, crustaceans, and molluses drying and processing; footwear production, specifically within the leather shoe industry; iron and steel casting; maintenance and repair of motor vehicles, mainly in automobile workshops; and the repair of personal and household goods.
The survey's results reveal that automobile workshops have the highest employment of child workers, with a total of 24,923 children working in this sector.
Following are 5,281 children in the footwear manufacturing sector, 4,099 involved in casting of iron and steel, 2,805 in informal and local repair of personal and household goods, and 898 in processing and preserving of fish, crustaceans and molluses.
Of the total child workers, 35.7% are based in rural areas, while 64.3% are based in urban settings.
According to the survey, 19.1% of boys and 7.7% of girls are involved in carrying heavy loads or pulling goods, with around 8.1% of boys and 0.3% of girls working at great heights or from the floor.
The BBS, with support from the International Labour Organization (ILO), carried out this national estimate to assess the situation of child labour within these five selected hazardous sectors.
The data collection took place from 3 June to 14 June in 2023.
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