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

Brickfield Schools continue in West Bengal, India

brickkilnnewssasia
Mar 12, 2023
1 min read

40 open air brickfield schools are running in West Bengal under the Brickfield Schools Programme of the Kolkata Mary Ward Social Centre in Kolkata. This NGO has been running schools for brick kiln children for the last 15 years. The schools, currently situated at Basirhat, Kalyani, Akra and Pujali, receive no help from W Bengal Govt which continues to ignore the needs of migrant brick kiln workers' children at the thousands of kilns in the state.

The NGO Athmik at Bandel, Hugli District continues to run 4 Brickfield Schools at Adisaptagram.

There are almost certainly other NGOs running brickfield schools in West Bengal and elsewhere. Send us news of them to post.

Most migrant workers at kilns in W Bengal come from Bihar (patheras - brick makers) and Jharkhand (rezas - brick carriers) with children who work from 8 years or so. Firemen who tend the kilns often come from UP, typically without families