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

An Out of Date post? Not very! In 2014 two brickkiln labourers had their hands cut off for escaping.

brickkilnnewssasia
Jun 21, 2020
1 min read

In 2014 two poor men from Odissa (Orissa) had their right hands chopped off for trying to escape transport to bonded labour in kilns near Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh (now in Telengana state). Dialu and Nilamber were tricked into joining a party of workers heading for bonded labour in the kilns of Andhra Pradesh. Recaptured after trying to escape, their families were told to pay large ransomes. Unable to pay, the men were given the choice of death, amputation of a leg, or amputation of a hand. They chose to lose a hand. Andhra Pradesh Govt denied that it has any bonded labour. The Corona Virus lockdown throughout India closed most kilns from late March. Imagine the condition of labourers unable to earn for the final months of the 2019 - 20 season, and owing money to kiln owners they were unable to repay. Brick kiln workers come from the poorest and most backward districts of India. They have zero income during lockdown and receive only dry food rations from the Govt.