National 7 (Spotlight Weekly)

Miserable Condition

Not only the number of minors working as domestic child laborers is alarmingly high, their state is also miserable

By THAKUR AMGAI

While the activists working in the sector of child welfare, were busy in the participation of the rallies, seminars and interactions concerning child rights on the “World Day Against Child Labor”, (June 12), minors aged less than 18 years were engaged in household chores in one in every five households in the capital.

With virtually no knowledge about their rights, more than 55,000 children are serving as domestic child laborers in the urban areas. According to a survey report on the Situation of Domestic Child Laborers in Kathmandu, carried out by the International Labor Office (ILO), 22,000 of these child laborers are working in Kathmandu Metropolitan City alone.

A working kid : Wanted attention

The state of these child laborers is wretched. Long working hours, harassing attitude of the employers’ family members, physical and mental abuse, very low pay if not nil are the woes that come as a package with most jobs of this kind. In extreme cases of exploitation, cases of sexual exploitation and confinement to the employer’s premises have also been reported.

Take an example of Bishal, a boy of 14, who was employed as a helper, in a family of five for more than 4 years. Bishal, whose employer is a senior advocate, had to accomplish all the household chores of the family, from escorting his employer’s daughter- who is 2 years older than him - to and from her school to washing dishes. He was employed for a nominal pay - which he never received himself for it was sent directly to his parents back in the village. He had no time for study. Moreover, he was often subjected to harassment from the employer’s wife, son and daughter. He not only had to attend the family members, but also to the staff and the clients of the Law Firm that the advocate housed in his own residence without any extra pay or benefit of that sort.

The ILO’s report shows that 53 per cent of the DCL do not receive any pay, 47 per cent work excessive hours and 79 per cent work at night. Likewise, one in every 10 child laborer is expected to be bonded. Parents have incurred debt from the employer and the children are not free to leave the employer until the debt is paid back. The report also shows that, more than 7 per cent of the children are 10 years or below.

Most of the affluent emerging middle class families in the urban areas employ a domestic child helper. Low pay and an increased power of exploitation to make them work as they like is the chief reason for the households preferring minors as the domestic helpers to the adults. “As both of us have to go to office, we need someone to look after the house and our children,” says, an employer of DCL. “Besides, adults demand more money and hesitate to do all the works.”

The children come to work to the cities from rural areas through various connections. Abject poverty, illiteracy and lack of awareness among the rural people are the main reasons for the children to become DCL. Reports have shown that most of the DCL come from a poor financial background and that almost all the parents are illiterate. The current insecurity situation also has had a large impact in their condition.

Relatives play a key role (46 per cent) in recruiting children as domestic helpers, while 16 percent are sent by the parents themselves. Likewise, 24 per cent of the child laborers are recruited by the employers themselves using their connections in the villages. Most of the child laborers work with the consent of their parents, except for a few of them who are self recruited (3.4 percent) or recruited through friends and brokers (3.8 percent).

A school girl : What about my future ?

At the employer’s place the DCL are supposed to do all the works in the house. They have to do kitchen work, dish washing, child minding, laundry to house cleaning and more. Doing all the works demand a lot of time, thereby extending their working time to more than double the time prescribed by ILO even to the adults. It has been found that more than three in every five DCL work 14 to 16 hours daily and only 1 percent of the children get to work less than 12 hours. Let alone getting a day off in the weeks, they do not even get enough time to meet their friends in the city and visit their villages once in a while. ILO has prescribed 40 hours as the standard working time for adults in a week. Overtime pay should be given if some people are engaged longer than the prescribed hours.

To the DCL, overtime is distant, even their pay is nominal. Out of 38.4 percent of the DCL who are paid, 39.3 percent get less than Rs. 4,000 a year, 40.7 percent get between Rs. 4000 to 6000 and only 20 percent get above Rs. 6000[$ 85] a year. 8.9 per cent of the DCL do not even know whether they get paid. The reason is most of the DCL do not collect the pay by themselves. For three in every five DCL, parents collect their children’s pay.

Some of the DCL are luckier relatively as they can go to school. About one in three DCL have the access to education, of which 71.6 per cent are in primary level, 18.7 in lower secondary, 8.9 in secondary level and 0.8 percent in higher secondary level.

With an objective to eradicate worst forms of child labor by 2010 in two phases, the government has introduced a time bound project. Conducted in two phases, the project- with support from ILO-IPEC and other organizations - will cover 22 districts in the first phase and 35 in the second phase.

While the ILO and other such organizations are striving to eradicate child labor, the outlet for these children have not yet been clear. Yadav Amatya, a Senior National Program Manager at the ILO-IPEC claims that there is no problem of resources for the first phase of the project. However, the continuation of such a project largely depends on the sufficiency of the resources. The children who are currently working as domestic labors could be easily rescued from their confinements but that will only leave them in a more precarious situation in the absence of a proper rehabilitation scheme. Given the large number sufferers Vs. limited resources, the successful completion ahead is a big challenge to both the government officials as well as the non-governmental organizations.