A Child's Plea - Join Hands With Me To Get Me My Rights

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday November 18, 2003 13:45 by Gregor Kerr kerrgregor at yahoo dot co dot uk

Fighting child bonded labour

It was hard to put a precise age on the young boy standing in front of us. He thought he was about 15 but he wasn't sure. Yet when he spoke of his life experiences, he spoke like an adult. In a loud clear voice he told about being taken away from his home many years before and about spending 15 hours a day working in a carpet factory where he had to weave six inches of carpet a day or he wouldn't be given any food. And when he cut his fingers - which was often - the 'treatment' was to put sulphur on the cut and burn it and make him go back to work. Looking straight at us, he pleaded in a clear strong voice "When you go back to your country, tell people what is happening. Please do something to help stop child labour."

We (my partner Paula and I) were in Mukti Ashram in Delhi, India. Mukti Ashram is a school/care centre for children who are rescued from bonded labour. I had met Suman, the centre’s director, last year when, as part of a visit to Ireland, she visited the Dublin inner-city school where I work and spoke to the pupils about the lives of some of the children she worked with. Subsequently my union branch, Dublin City North INTO (Irish National Teachers Organisation), had made a donation of 2,000Euro to the work of Mukti Ashram, so when – as part of a year's career break - we decided to come to Delhi, I made contact and asked if we could come to visit.

It was a visit which left us both truly overwhelmed and awed by the magnificent work being carried out there and by the unbelievable strength of spirit shown by the children – many of whom had gone through horrific experiences. We were collected from our hotel in central Delhi by Suman and when we arrived at the Ashram the 100 or so kids were lined up to welcome us with garlands of flowers, dancing and drumming. It was unbelievable!! The Ashram caters for both boys and girls from the ages of about 6/7 to 14/15. The kids are all rescued from situations of bonded/slave labour and spend six months there – being educated and helped to adjust - before rejoining their families throughout India.

The education focuses on basic literacy and numeracy as many of the children are illiterate when they arrive, and also on giving the older children some useful skills such as tailoring, printing and mechanics which they may be able to use in their villages in the future. There is also a strong emphasis placed on encouraging and assisting them to tell their stories, to be able to speak about what happened to them so that when they go back to their communities they will become advocates speaking out against the abuses of child labour.

Nobody knows the extent of child labour in India. Amazingly while child labour in industry is supposedly illegal, domestic child labour is perfectly legal. So it is totally allowable for someone to have a child of 6 or 7 working as a full-time domestic servant. And as for it’s being illegal to employ children in industry, huge numbers end up in bonded labour especially in the carpet industry (children’s small fingers are ideal for tying the knots in hand woven carpets), in stone quarries and even in hotels. On its website, the international organisation ‘Human Rights Watch’ says: "Without comprehensive birth registration or reliable nationwide surveys, it is impossible to make better than a rough estimate of how many children are being held in bondage in India. Human Rights Watch has found that there are credible estimates of sixty to 115 million working children in India, of whom at least fifteen million are bonded…." (1)

Other organisations reckon that this figure may be grossly underestimated. For example, USAid India reckon that in India there are "100 – 150 million children (aged 5 – 14 years) ‘out of school’….More than 44 million children employed in …..industries…..A significant percentage of these 44 million children are bonded labourers….forced to work to pay off their parents’ small loans…." (2)

This is how a lot of children end up in bonded labour situations, forced to work for years to pay off a small loan taken out by their parents and which leaves them seemingly forever indebted to the loan sharks. Many others are simply enticed away from their homes by the promise of being able to earn money to help their families. Needless to say the money never materialises – but the work certainly does!!

Probably the most moving of the stories we witnessed was that of nine girls from Rajasthan who had been rescued from a stone quarry, along with the rest of their families. These kids were the third generation of their families to have been forced to work in the quarry breaking stones. Their grandparents had been captured/enticed away from their homes, the girls’ parents and the girls themselves had been born in the quarry – it was the only home they knew. When they arrived at the Ashram they had never seen fruit or vegetables, their sole diet had been a mixture of flour and water, with the odd drop of buttermilk which they had got from sympathetic local villagers. And they worked breaking stones for 12 to 14 hours a day seven days a week.

To see the pictures of their gaunt faces and emaciated bodies taken when they arrived was heartbreaking. And now, a few short months later, they were standing in front of us, smiling, laughing and singing and telling us in clear voices of their experiences (through Suman as the interpreter). In itself this was testament to the wonderful work being carried out at Mukti Ashram. These children had been given back their childhood and had, for the first time in their lives, been given a chance to smile, laugh and just be themselves.

Another boy of about 10 (most of the children didn't know what age they were) told of how he was taken away from his family many years before and had spent the time since working in a hotel. He was so young when he was taken away that he couldn't remember where he came from or who his family was.

To listen to the children's stories was heartbreaking. I would have loved to sit down some of the 'captains of industry' responsible for this suffering, or the government officials who are supposed to ensure it doesn't happen and make them listen. Needless to say, the chances of a successful prosecution of any of these exploiters is quite slim (though they do try).

The other side of the story was to see the children now - most of whom had only been in the Ashram for a few months - to see the sparkle in their eyes, the grins on their faces and to hear the determination in their voices as they said to us again and again - when you go back to your country, please tell people what is happening and please do something to help stop child labour. It was quite extraordinary to hear such strong adult pleas coming from children, but when you consider what they had been through you realise that while they might be children, they haven't had a childhood.

That's what this article is about - my small attempt to raise awareness, to do as the children asked and to "let everybody know". I hope that when you read this, you might be moved to do something. As you can guess, money is always a problem. For example, at the moment they're in the middle of building a toilet block and just 4,000 Euros would finish it off but it's money they don't have. Another 3,000 Euros would allow them to build a bathroom/shower block.

An Irish "Friends of Mukti Ashram" has recently been formed by, among others, Irish Examiner journalist Brian O'Mahony and children's author Larry O'Loughlin (who organised Suman's trip to Ireland last year) with the twin aims of raising money and consciousness. A bank account has been opened at AIB, 279 Templeogue Rd., Dublin 6W (Sort Code: 933457, Account Number: 15374093). If you feel you would like to contribute to the fabulous work of Mukti Ashram, you can do so through this account. Raising consciousness and awareness is important too - there are huge numbers of products on sale throughout the EU which are made from bonded labour. Some estimates say that there are more than four hundred products being sold into Europe that are produced by child labour, ranging from glass ware, brass ware, clothing, agricultural products through to carpets and garments.

One of the problems trying to quantify the products involved is that not all products are marked with country of origin tags. For example, buy a shirt or jumper in any major retailer and it is very rare to find a country label. The one major exception to the labelling rule seems to be the carpet industry where "Hand Made In India/Bangladesh/ Pakistan etc." is used as a selling point. The South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude did organize with one carpet manufacturing group to introduce a "RUGMARK" label and any carpet bearing that label is guaranteed not to have been made by child labour. That doesn't of course mean that carpets not carrying the rugmark are made by child labourers it just means it can't be guaranteed they're not.

On 25th April 2002 the European parliament passed a motion calling on the European Commission and EU governments to draw up a list of products known to have been manufactured using child labour or forced labour and to make sure that the country of origin is indicated on such "slave-trade" goods, but to date nothing appears to have been done.

Mukti Ashram's director, Suman will be visiting Ireland again in February as p[art of a consciousness raisng trip. If you like to meet her, or if you could organise community or school groups for her to talk to please get in touch with Larry O'Loughlin at lockie2@eircom.net.

Finally in the words of the children themselves (written during workshop discussions and translated by Suman for us)

An appeal

This country has earned huge amounts of foreign currency out of our labour.
But in return what have we got?
People say that children are the future,
But what kind of future have we when we are living in darkness?
We want the light of education so that our future can be bright.
Our country's constitution also says that children should have an education,
Would you like to join hands with us to get us our rights?

I am poor because my father is unemployed.
But some people say I can get employment.
But why?
Because I am a child, a small child and I don't understand much about the world.
So with the result....
....I will work more
....I will get less wages
....I won't be demanding anything
But at the end I might die.
I don't need work,
Give work to my father with minimum wage.
So that I can live, I can study and smile like other children, and achieve something in my life.
Would you like to join hands with me in order to get me education, a smiling childhood?

(1) see http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/india
(2) http://www.usaid.gov/in/aboutusaid/projects/childlabor.html
Unfortunately bonded child labour is not a disgrace confined to India, for further information on the issue worldwide, see the excellent website http://www.globalmarch.org