Child Labour grows at Afghan Kilns as girls replace women

Aljazeera report of Sept 2022 with many photos, describing sharply increasing child labour in Afghanistan’s brick kilns since the Taliban took over and most international aid stopped flowing. Children are working so that their families will not die of starvation.

As you know the Taliban regime has broken its word and banned women from most work outside the home. To compensate for this more children are working, and especially girls are doing the heavy work at the kilns that their mothers used to do.

In case anyone should think that Afghanistan is an especially backward and benighted place, take note that in the World’s largest parliamentary democracy India (which sends rockets to Mars and exports IT technicians to the West by the thousand) probably a million child labourers work at the brick kilns every year and do not attend any school. This child labour continues within 10 or 20 kilometres of the residences of chief ministers in the full light of day.

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2022/9/26/photos-poverty-pushes-afghan-children-to-work-at-brick-kilns

Child Education at Brick Kilns

brickkilnnewssasia
May 1, 2014
1 min read

Brick Kiln School with first class teacher, near Naihati, West Bengal

Lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of children in South Asia are prevented from going to school because the migration of families to brick kilns prevents enrollment in ordinary schools.

At some brick kilns NGOs are running non-formal schools and childrens’ centres. If suitable persons are employed as teachers, and given the skills to be very effective teachers, children at brick kilns can receive good quality education, without the need for expensive and permanent buildings and infrastructure.

With a skilled and active teacher it is possible to make some children literate in their mother language within six months. One such teacher is shown here, teaching at a brick kiln in West Bengal, India.

At present little government funding reaches children at brick kilns. The small projects run by NGOs depend mostly on foreign donations. It is time for National and State or Provincial Governments to take responsibility for the education and health of their citizens who happen to be children at brick kilns.

At present few migrant children attend schools when they return home to their native places. To mainstream these children is possible. The Kolkata based NGO KMWSC has been mainstreaming brick kiln returned children in Nawada District of Bihar for several years. Even if the children leave school again after a few months to return to brick kilns it is their right to attend the schools, and the duty of the schools to accept them.

Little recent and reliable information is available on line about education initiatives in brick kilns. Please send information urgently to Brick Kiln News about any initiative to educate brick kiln children. We will share it.

#poverty #education #India #childlabour #southasia