A disturbing incident made headlines recently. It concerned a social organization called Happy Home that had been gathering poverty-stricken children promising to educate them. Instead, these children were being made to work as menial laborers in a building project. There are many children in Nepal who work to support their family, and there are those forced to work for the people they hardly know. Forcing children to work, and by doing so, jeopardizing their future by depriving them of vital life opportunities, is one of the most grievous crimes.
And yet it happens every day, right under the eyes of the law enforcers. The most frequently heard reply from the exploiters is that they “rescue” children from a life of poverty and addiction. But by restricting the children’s movements and offering them little pay, such employers defeat their purpose. The proprietors of Happy Home even went so far as to say that the children were asked to carry materials “as a joke.” The children could not have found it funny. [break]
Meanwhile financial hardship threatens Bal Mandir, an organization that provides education and care to poor, war-affected and abandoned children. It is struggling to even pay its staff, while rackets such as Happy Home continue to feed off of children’s quick, lithe labor. Children have better eyesight than adults, which is why they are recruited for subtle needlework required in embroidery. Even this work is a luxury for other children who perform hard menial labor at stone quarries and construction sites.
Children are at the lowest rung of the power spectrum, below the most marginalized communities of adults, below even the most oppressed women. They lack money, privileges, property, education, connections, and voice, all the trappings of power. Even as atrocities are committed on them, they have no way of protesting. As a result, even as Nepal has progressed in other social sectors, it has made little progress in child labor.
The percentage of Nepali children reported to be working was 41 in 1996, which, after dipping to 32 percent in 2004, rose to 44 percent in 2010. It is time to reach out to this voiceless community that has no way of reaching state apparatus by itself. Child care centers like Bal Mandir that work transparently to provide needy children with education and care, so that they avoid the fate of children exploited by Happy Home, need to be better supported.
But even this does not address the issue of voluntary child labor. Labor industries typically pay less to women and children than to men, because the former are less productive for the same hours. While this seems fair in cold utilitarian calculation, in the big picture it is unfair to the society as a whole. The female and child laborers need to support their family on their income, just as the male laborers do. Many social organizations have taken up the cause of equal pay for women, but mentioning equal pay for children is taboo in many forums because child labor itself is illegal. Of course, it would be wonderful if child labor could be eliminated altogether, but short of that, for the children who have no option to working to make their ends meet, the least they deserve is equitable pay.
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