RESPONSE AND EFFECTS OF CHILD LABOR IN BANGLADESH
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Child Labor in Bangladesh, particularly in the hazardous conditions of factory work, has a negative physical and mental effect on the children. In Bangladesh’s garment factories, children endure abuse from their supervisors when they make even the smallest of mistakes. Many adults that have tried to form work unions to protect working children, which is a protected right of workers under the law, have been beaten, and others have therefore been scared from forming unions. They work long hours every day to earn only a small sum of money for their families. The time that should be spent attending school is instead spent working in factories, causing them to lack a proper education. These working children will continue to labor and become an uneducated adult population because they were working when they should have been receiving proper schooling.
The issue of child labor in Bangladesh receives considerable attention, particularly when children are found in all too frequent factory fires. When reporters have filmed and presented obscene evidence of the child labor, the blame is rightfully pinned on Western companies, who deny it despite the clear evidence that children are making products for their company. Major companies like Wal-Mart, Gap, and Target, are continually accused of using child labor, but they only deny it, and then continue to use it in their factories in Bangladesh. Even though it would only cost them a small amount of expenses, they do not work to improve the safety of their factories and continue to view their “workers’ lives… as perishable as the clothes they [make]” (11). These companies only care about maximizing their profits and do not take into account for who they are harming in the process.
Other countries and the United Nations have reached out to help Bangladesh in the efforts to solve the issue of child labor in their country, but Bangladesh continues to turn them away. While child labor in Bangladesh is dangerous, it is argued that putting a ban on it is a bad idea. While work situations in factories and the textile industry should be made less harmful for children, families will still be dependent upon some portion of their income from the work their children do. If we ban them from working in factories because of the dangerous situations they are put in there, they will often find their way into more harmful markets, either working as servants, on the streets, or even prostitutes. For these reasons, it is argued that children should be better educated on working in factories and conditions should be improved rather than a ban put on child labor in Bangladesh’s factories.
By: Nineveh O'Connell
The issue of child labor in Bangladesh receives considerable attention, particularly when children are found in all too frequent factory fires. When reporters have filmed and presented obscene evidence of the child labor, the blame is rightfully pinned on Western companies, who deny it despite the clear evidence that children are making products for their company. Major companies like Wal-Mart, Gap, and Target, are continually accused of using child labor, but they only deny it, and then continue to use it in their factories in Bangladesh. Even though it would only cost them a small amount of expenses, they do not work to improve the safety of their factories and continue to view their “workers’ lives… as perishable as the clothes they [make]” (11). These companies only care about maximizing their profits and do not take into account for who they are harming in the process.
Other countries and the United Nations have reached out to help Bangladesh in the efforts to solve the issue of child labor in their country, but Bangladesh continues to turn them away. While child labor in Bangladesh is dangerous, it is argued that putting a ban on it is a bad idea. While work situations in factories and the textile industry should be made less harmful for children, families will still be dependent upon some portion of their income from the work their children do. If we ban them from working in factories because of the dangerous situations they are put in there, they will often find their way into more harmful markets, either working as servants, on the streets, or even prostitutes. For these reasons, it is argued that children should be better educated on working in factories and conditions should be improved rather than a ban put on child labor in Bangladesh’s factories.
By: Nineveh O'Connell