Minor Ragpickers: A Problem or Solution?

Mrs. Jayanti Jha

Ragpickers, known as "Khate" in Nepalese slang have recently become part of the growing population of street children with the advent of recycling practices and the manner in which these children are exploited. Children are among the most neglected, abused and exploited segments of the population, exposed to such a worst forms of labour as ragpicking. In Nepal, child work and child labour is a common phenomenon.

More than 40% of the total population is living below the poverty line and the conditions of such families are really very deplorable. Most of the children are forced to be ragpickers as their parents don’t have any other alternative means of livelihood.

In a country or a major city, it may be a problem seeing the ragpickers everywhere. But it is solution for a family whom ragpickers are supporting financially. They are working as a supporting beam of their house. Rural- urban migration, hardship in rural life, large families and an increasing occurrence of family problems are reportedly among the leading causes behind the increasing number of the ragpickers in the urban areas.

Survival on the street is a daily struggle of these children. Different researches conducted by CWIN has shown that a number of children quote poverty and death of bread owner in the family as the main reason for coming in this field, while mistreatment by stepparents and the inability to attend school were among the other reasons.

Most of the ragpickers have poor health. Some of them suffer from acute chronic tuberculosis, while the others have physical injuries like cuts, scratches or burns, skin diseases like scabies, or intestinal diseases. Apart from it, these children are exposed to serious dog bites and criminal activities such as pick-pocketing, stealing, drug peddling and prostitution. In fact, more than 90% of ragpickers are found in detention into police custody. In detention centers, they are mixed up with other criminals and are often beaten and tortured or exposed to abuse by other criminals.

The ragpickers in general react relatively positively with other street children and NGOs, but face negative interactions with the police, civil society, junkyards owners and criminal gangs. They live in a world that teaches them violence and abuse and expose them to unhealthy behaviors and lifestyles.

Most of the ragpickers have positive attitude toward their work virtually due to the fact that they are boss of their own, do not have to apply any specific rules or schedules and can work when they feel like it. Ragpicking may not be their primary goal, rather a natural progression in their search for easy work and relative freedom. Most child ragpickers say they would go to school if they were provided with appropriate financial support.

In fact, the survey conducted by ILO "Situation of Child Ragpickers: A Rapid Assessment" shows that 72.5% of the respondents enjoy ragpicking as they feel it is a quick earning job and also that they enjoy greater freedom in this work because they can eat anything and go anywhere else. Other ragpickers feel that ragpicking is an easy way of making money. However, some of them have negative attitude towards the job and want to change the job if given better opportunity.

Researches have shown that more than 66.7% ragpickers are of the age between 10-14. This is also the period when a person can grow up knowledge and skill and devote themselves to studies to become to become a responsible citizen of a country. Unfortunately, in Nepal most of these children are playing with their future collecting the rags. They carry dirty heavy sack instead of school bag and they hold cigarette instead of book and pen in their hands. It is high time for all of us to think about the possible solution of the problem.

In fact, the problem of child ragpickers is one that cannot be solved unless children from disadvantaged families are given a way to fully enjoy their fundamental child rights. The socio-psychological issues caused by poverty and family adversity, which are amplified by lack of social support and structure, contribute to the migration of these young boys and girls away from their family and environment, and into a life on the street. The more time these children spend on the street, the more difficult is to take them away from it, as they enjoy a sense of freedom and self dependence, which they feel they cannot have in other environment. They don’t get proper respect in other work even if they might try.

Therefore, the ultimate solution of this problem is to raise social awareness and action groups to help these children’s sense of society and belonging, and provide better environment where they could do something and earn for the family by engaging themselves in productive and creative work.

Citizenship must be issued to all of them. They also need to be rehabilitated so that they can find a place in society. A conventional schooling system might not be appropriate to these children. But it is likely that proper vocational training might be useful to them to receive functional education and find alternative better-paid jobs. This will enhance their talent and skill and can also help them get appropriate job in the market and thereby contribute in the task of nation building. Since this task is complex and challenging, it is not possible for any one sector to resolve the problem. The problem can be addressed if the government, NGOs, INGOs and all those concerned with this situation work together.

Let us transform these innocent children as the beam of the whole country rather than beam of a house. Let us do something for these needy children and help them to make their future brighter so that each of could pick and love these sweet children with affection rather than using humiliating word as "khate"!!!

Women’s Participation in Socio-economic Development

Susan Shrestha, MA Sociology, TU

Nepal is one of the least developed countries in the world. The total GDP of Nepal in 1997 was US$ 4.9 billion or per capita US$ 220. The basic indicators are not satisfactory in the most areas of the country. There are numerous reasons for the backwardness and underdevelopment of Nepal. However, geo-physical situation or landlockedness is the major cause for Nepal’s overall development. Nepal’s northern boarder is almost inaccessible to people due to high mountains and difficult terrains. Besides uneven topography, some pristine traditions and cultures or conservative traditions and superstitions are some of the very strong barricades for this situation.

Nepal was one of the 181 member countries of the United Nations which participated in the Fourth World conference in beiging in 1995. Nepal expressed her full commitments to the Beiging Platform for Action for gender equality and women empowerment because these were and still are pertinent issues in the context of Nepal. Gender disparity and descrimination against women in 12 critical concern areas ; education, health, violence, armed conflict, economy, power and decision making, institutional mechanism, human right, media, environment, girl child are the main factors behind poverty and under development of Nepal.

Prior to 1930, Nepalese Women’s participation on development activities were insignificant, vocational schools which were established in various parts of the country to impart technical skills to women could not make any significant contributuin until the mid 1950s. Later,a National Vocational Training Centre was established to train women as trainers. Neverthless, the number of trained women in education, health and agricultural sectors are fewer than men. Though their has been an appreciable increase in the female literacy rate, it is persistently lower than the male literacy rate.

During the International Women’s Decade, the women Service Coordination Committee under the Social Service National Coordination Councial, and a

Women Development Section under the Ministry of Panchyat and local Development were established. The Civil Code was amended and many laws discriminatory to women were repealed. Nepal is a signatory of the Convention on the Elimination of all Form of Dicrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 1991 and has moral obligation to follow its principles and directives. During this period, a Women Education Unit and a Women’s Employment Service Centre were also created. Many training programs were carried out to enable women to engage in income generating activities. Most important of all, policies relating to women development was incorporated for the first time in the Sixth Five Year Plan.

In the first time-bound plans there was no mention of women’s participation in development works. In reference to International Women’s Year, 1975, the world women’s conference held in Mexico city had decided that every nation should implment its women development projects on the basis of the necessity and demands of the country after preparing a national activity – plan through government and non governmental agencies. In this connection from Sixth to Tenth Planning women’s participation has given higher priorities. Almost all development organizations and institutions have a women’s component, but in most cases only a token women is included in an effort to show that their program encourages women’s participation.

Labour force participation of women in the Nepalese economy is very high.

Although the rates for both females and males have been found to be declined in 2001 the absolute number of usually active persons both female and male have noticed to be more in 2001. This indicates that the rate of growth in labour market could not keep in pace with the population growth.

However their contributions remain limited because they are mostly confined to less productive sector of the economy and many of their contributions are simply not reflected in the national accounts due to limitations of the national accounting system.

Women’s participation in power and decision making remains extremly low.

Existing socio – economic status of women, traditional bias, inadequate political commitment are some important constraints in increasing women’s participation in power and decision makiong. Nepal is addressing this issue through her efforts to raise socio-economic status of women. No significant affirmative actions have so far been taken although some such options are being seriously considered. Although some importants in participation of girls and women in education are observed, the gender disparities persist in terms of enrolment rates in the schools, adult literacy rates and participation of women in higher education and skill training programs. The constraints faced are low budgetary allocation to education, low efficiency of the Nepalese education system, persisting traditional attitudes towards women’s education and lack of relevance of present education. Due to son preference society of Nepal the bias against the girl child begins before she is born. Girls get less education and health services, start helping in household chores from an early age, get married off quite young and start child bearing from an early age. Nepal has taken legal and social initiatives to address the existing discrimination against the girl child, but the progress remains slow due to persisting traditional patriarchal attitudes, poverty and weak enforcement of the legal provisions.

A study undertaken by the international Fund for Agricultural development (IFAD) in 1999 found that women in the hill districts of Nepal had heavy workloads and a high level of physical vulnerability, albeit with class/caste differences. Women were found to work around 16 hours a day, compared to the 9-10 hours men put in by men. The country’s Gender –related Development Index (GDI) which currently stands at 0.452, there is wide variation over different geographic regions (seeTable 3). And it is the midwestern and far western development regions that have significantly greater gender disparities compared to the other three regions.

In overall terms implementation of Beijing Platform for Action in Nepal for gender equality and women empowerment have been slow as evidenced by only marginal improvements or virtually no improvements in twelve areas of critical concern. Nepal has formulated action plan, adopted new policy initiatives and initiated new programs. However, their effective implementation has been constrained by political instability, weak governmance, inadequate political commitment, inadequate resource, inefficiency of the public systems and traditional patriarchal society

Decentralization and participatory development approaches have been received a kind of big boost with the enactment of the Local Self –government Act 1997 which devolves authorities and resources to the local level bodies. But, on the other hand, the beginning of the insurgence in the country with undesirable consequences has been obstructing to some extent the smooth sailing of the democratic process, particularly because it has increased the more problem among the women of Nepal, so that they are forced to leave their village areas and dislocated to urban centres including in kathmandu to lead a very difficult life just before and after the year 2000. The exact no. of those dislocated women, their economic condition, difficult situations and its impact to the existing society and practical policy recommendations has been a subject matter of study for the present time.

Despite several initiatives to reduce poverty there has been no perceptible improvement in poverty situation. The poverty alleviation initiatives include the national Plan of Action and the Ninth as well as Tenth Plan which include several poverty reducing policies and programs including national women’s income generating programs. But the question is that without managing the children’s problem how could women or mothers work comfortably ? For the women’s empowernment or economically involve in their own business or profession the practical approach of Community Child Day Care Centres (CCDCC) for working women should be prioritised. Because many women have been left their jobs or works just because of not getting the provision of half time leave or not finding reliable CCDCC or its heavy cost.

The Plans seek to reduce people in absolute poverty from 42 percent of the total population to 32 percent by 2002 and 10 percent by 2017. That’s why in order to increase the per capita or to reduce the poverty, planned policy, acts, civil code, human rights, laws or whatsoever toward women must be practiced in reality. Other wise the Cricis of Practice will be continued in our Nepalese Culture.

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