Man is as high
as he can dream. There are so many people who never believe in it and if you
are going to tell it they must laugh at you. Even they may pinch that you have
been living in a fool's paradise. Okay fine, you may tell them that you might
have a wrong concept, but what about the successful people like Steve Jobs,
Bill Gates and ranging from Mark Zukarbarg to a pride of
Bangladesh Dr. Muhammad Younus.All of them had big dreams and contributed their
best to finally transform dreams into reality. Children are the key to success
in the coming future and childhood is the most important stage of both mental
and physical development. But to the aspect of this country, more than a crore
children have limited access to education and proper nutrition. Their struggle
of life starts from living under the shade of a tree or go through fetal
development in a slum in a womb of a hungry mother whose husband might have
left her leaving nothing behind. This is why their child had never had the true
taste of getting up brought during their childhood stage, but choose doing hard
work in a factory or any other work station or choose to pick-pockets and beg
in public, only just to meet all the family requirements.
Child Labor has
been a significant issue for a developing country like Bangladesh. It
engineers the demolition of the future generation. 'We' the 'society' killed
their childhood, made them work from an early age, with no scope of going to
school, we are gradually narrowing the Nation's potential to a few privileged
people of the country.
We dreamed a
country which will be the kid's paradise. Now a days isn’t the dream becoming
hard? Only because of poverty. Millions of people in our country living under
the poverty line don't have enough food for a certain upcoming single day. So
who can say how it will be possible for them to send their children to any type
of school where there is no food to eat, No house to live or no second piece of
Cloth to wear after shower. For this reason they are sending their child to the
factory instead of sending to school. And then the childhood sinking down into
the earth forever becoming a victim of child labour. Dr.Muhammad Younus wrote a
book named “Creating a World without poverty”. We must proudly thank the The
Nobel laureate for this Idea. Without creating a poverty free country it is
impossible to fight Child labour.
However more
important reasons may be identified as poverty and vulnerability, low quality
education, social and cultural tradition and children’s own desire. We the
civil society often arrange seminar about child safety and child development.
In those seminars, we really do nothing for child rights. Those seminars and
programmes are nothing but a show to the world that we the civil society are
aware of the issue, but in reality, everything's insane! Different laws and
regulations have been enacted in Bangladesh with a view to protect
children from labour. A memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the
Government of Bangladesh and ILO,IPEL was signed on Oct 11,1994 and IPEC
activities were started in 1995. But in reality every day children are
dramatically sacrificing their childhood by joining work to earn a living.
Elimination of child labour is desirable but it is a difficult task in real
term but not impossible at all. We have to understand the power of positive
thinking. Phase by phase elimination of child labour may be possible if we work
for it all together and we must be confident in our steps. Government must take
actions to strictly enforce measures to stop child labour and to make school
attendance affordable. Existing child labour laws need to be enforce
effectively .
As extreme
poverty compels children’s to go to work, policy measure to reduce pressure of
poverty on the poor household should be adopted. Beside, some form of social
assistance perhaps be provided by professional social workers, voluntary
organizations or even religious bodies. Thus, the solution of this problem lies
in rapid socio-economic development for removing poverty. After all it must be
made sure that if child labour can not be totally abolished, at least the child
must not be deprived from receiving education. There are so many organization
active in Bangladesh
working for child rights and child education like Unicef, Save the Children,
BRAC, World Vision, Chotoderbondhu and so on. Before we stop children to go to
work we must ensure that they have enough food to eat, a house to live in so
that they can easily go to school. Otherwise it can not be possible to reduce
child labour. If we assure of the availability of food and a living to the poor
children, no child will be interested to go to work. Every child has a bright
future, every child is a born hero. We may not make the whole world happy, but
it is rather delightable to be a part of it. Love children, Love your Country.
Dream big, think positively and never hesitate in donating for the poor. Lets
all together make the world a kid's paradise where there must be a dictionary
without the words “child labour and poverty”.
……………….
Written by:
zazafee
SM Hall
University
of Dhaka
Email: zazafee@yahoo.com
