As part of the Bangladesh Government’s initiative to eliminate child labour by 2025, six industrial sectors have been declared free from child labour recently.
The State Minister for Labour Monnujan Sufian, at a press conference on Thursday (4 February), maintained export-oriented leather and footwear along with silk, glass, ceramic and ship re-cycling are now child labour-free.
The Minister said that the Government — the Government in November 2016 pledged to the international community to eliminate the worst-form of child labour by 2021 and child labour of its all forms by 2025 — formed a national monitoring committee in 2019 with the aim to declare different industrial sectors free from child labour gradually, keeping with the recommendations made by the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE) and went on to add that the committee inspected a number of factories of the six sectors in different locations in November-December, 2020, after the trade bodies concerned claimed there was no child labour in the units of the concerned sectors.
Subsequently, the DIFE inspected the factories and did not find any child labour even as before the declaration was made, the trade bodies promised no factory would appoint any child labour, Monnujan Sufian claimed.