The government needs to improve co-ordination of social safety net schemes to direct more help and education services towards the large numbers of children in informal employment and domestic labour.
According to a recent survey by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies and Unicef, the total number of street children stands at 1.2 million in the country. A further 400,000 children are engaged in full time domestic service.
While programs which provide non-formal education and skills training have had some success, collectively they are not proving effective in lifting these children out of poverty or ending the cycle of child labour.
Of most concern is that hundreds of thousands of children are still known to be working in harmful and hazardous conditions in industries such as construction and recycling.
The National Child Labour Elimination Policy 2010 is rightly focused towards such activities and tackling the most dangerous and onerous forms of labour, particularly work that impacts negatively on a child’s mental and physical well-being and development.
More attention needs to be directed towards addressing the needs of children who are excluded from education and have not benefited from the good progress which has been made in rooting out child labour from the formal employment sector and in increasing general enrollment in schools.
As a society, we need to get better at helping the large numbers of children who are being deprived of right to education and opportunities.