Child labour in Bangladesh exists both in rural and urban areas. It is a big deterrent to the primary and the secondary schooling. The number of child labour in Bangladesh is almost 3.2 million. Many of these working children of our country earn less than 30 US$ per month. Most of the child labourers in Bangaldesh work in agricultural sector. A large portion of the total child labour of our country works as domestic servants.
The causes behind child labour in our country are:
Poverty: As the root cause of many other problems, poverty is being treated as one key triggering reason of child labor in Bangladesh. When people have to think about their meal, and how to manage it; issues like education are then being counted as one luxury to them. Even after realizing the drawbacks of child labor, and its negative impact on the physical, and psychological state of the children, parents are sometimes left with no option but to engage their child at some hard working job.
Illiteracy: The rate of literacy is significantly low, which is being treated as one root cause of child labor in Bangladesh. Per capita income remains very low, which did not let the mass people to get educated, and realize the importance of education in life. Moreover, greater portions among those, who have such realization, are unable to continue the expense, which is required for their basic education, even. As a result, majority of the people remain illiterate, and they have found nothing wrong to engage their children in any such hard working activities.
Family Breakups: The family bonding has gone loosen, when the financial crisis rises at its peak. This happened to many hundreds and thousands of family across different areas of Bangladesh. When the separation has come so frequently between the parents, children are becoming shelter less, and faced the hard reality of life before their expected time. The problem has seen as very severe in intensity, when this happen to the lower class, and the lower middle class of the society. Children are then left with no option but to engage in any sort of earning for their living.
Lack of knowledge of the parents: Due to the proper understanding the importance and necessity of education in life, many parents had seen to let their child get engaged in earning, at their early age. To some parents, things like education is really expensive to continue for their children, but a larger portion among the parents don't bother about child labour, even after they had the capacity to continue the education of their child.
The issue is really concerning, as the number of child labour is not decreasing in our country. Hopefully, international organizations like Unicef, ILO, Save the Children are now working in our country with their best effort to prevent child labour.
Bangladesh Government has also trying by every possible means to reduce and eliminate this problem through governmental and semi governmental organization. A number of NGO's (Non Government Organization) is also working vibrantly to deal with the child labor problem in Bangladesh. In fact, without an all out effort of the common people, it is not possible to solve the problem.
