The solution is simple: if you make the families economically solvent enough they would not send their underage children to earn money to support themselves as well as other family members. Laws can prevent abuse of children in the workplaces if they are implemented in their letter and spirit, but as long as acute poverty of these families persists, child labour will continue to haunt our society. The sight of boys below 10 years with barely any cloths in their body doing heavy welding work in factories will continue to remind us that economic distribution of our society is still grossly uneven. While their counterparts from the privileged sections of society go to school, enjoy the good things of life and grow up as decent citizens of the country, they are forced to work in inhuman condition for days in and days out. Plain and simple, this is economic and social injustice.
The solution to the problem may be simple but it is really difficult to achieve it. According to a report published in this daily on the occasion of the World Day Against Child Labour, there are about three million children in the country who are involved in child labour. There are many employers in the country whether they are bidi factory owners of Rangpur, or hotel boys in the restaurants of the capital who find it convenient to employ the underage children because they can buy their labour very cheaply. In many places these children workers are abused as well.
To bring these children from workplace to school, both medium and long term programmes can be taken up, as short term measures will hardly help the situation. First of all, for the medium term, the government as well as concerned NGOs have to increase incentive packages in their social safety net programmes so that the families with acute poverty find it more interesting to send their children to a factory than to a school. This help must include direct cash incentive to certain families. To stop dropout, the school can also increase motivational efforts. The government has made education free at the school level with free distribution of books. To make school education more attractive to children as well as the families they come from, scholarship programmes have to be increased.
But more importantly, the government now may think of making the school education for all children compulsory altogether. Even a beginning in this line may help us greatly. The long-term solution is an economic one that would target increasing scopes of income for the disadvantaged in the society.