Street Children and Child Labour.

STREET CHILDREN AND CHILD LABOUR

The bustling streets of Kathmandu´s Thamel district are like a Disneyland for

world-wanderers. Bicycle rickshaws, money changers, and merchants hoard

everything from exotic paper goods to backpacking equipment.

But for many poor and homeless children in Nepal, the narrow streets are

far less inviting.

They compete with each other for tourist rupees. Older children mark out territory and beat

the younger ones. Gang leaders push opium. And merchants offer work and then refuse to pay.

Like in other developing countries, migration of rural children into a city like Kathmandu

is an increasing phenomenon in our society. It is mainly because of unbalanced development

between city and village, growing unemployment, landlessness and lack of opportunities

in the villages, many people are seeking migration in urban areas.

Likewise, thousands of children avery year leave their village for a better opportunity

in the cities. This has ultimately created an increasing number of employment of

children in the urban areas. Among the migrant children, many are landed in the cities along with their

parents, some run away together with their friends from the village and others are brought

by labour contractors for the employment in different areas such as domestic service, restaurants

and bars, carpet factories, brick kilns, transportation, scavenging and so on.

Street children and migrant working children are a growing urban phenomenon in Nepal

these days.The growing urban poor areas, shanty towns, slums and squatters have created

tremendous problems for children.

These children are not only underprivileged and neglected but are alsoabused and exploited

in various ways.

Child sex abuse, arrest of street children, children in conflict with laws, trafficking of children

for forced labour and forced prostitution are ever increasing in the city of

Kathmandu. Every year, at least five hundred children land on the streets of Kathmandu due to

various socio-economic reasons. Most of them come from poor and broken family backgrounds.

Employment of migrant children in different types of work in Kathmandu is ever on the rise.

Every year thousands of new children are brought into Kathmandu by labour recruiters

to supply cheap labour to the carpet factories, domestic service, restaurants and so on.

Most of these children work and live in the most difficult circumstances and are deprived

of their fundamental rights. They have very little chance to be protected from

exploitation and harm. Due to a lack of socialization facilities for children at risk,

many suffer from different forms of exploitation and violation of their rights.

About a thousand children live on the streets of Kathmandu.

It is estimated that there are three million working children in Nepal.

Most are either in the agricultural sector or in the carpet industry, a vital export

for Nepal. Many are bonded labourers: Fourteen year old Asharam Chaudhary of Shreepur Majhgaon,

Kailali district, far-west Nepal, is a bonded labourer.

He has no idea about the Sunki (loan) his father borrowed NRS 700 (approximately 100 SEK or 12 US$),

which is now NRS 14,000 (approximately 2,400 SEK or 290 US$, as claimed by the landlord.

He is obliged to work for minimum wages. His father died; his elder brother has

disappeared and the responsability for his mother (aged 55), elder sister (aged 20)

a younger brother (aged 12) and another younger brother (aged 8) lies on him.

His mother and sister do household chores, and his brothers graze cows and goats

for his master.

All these details were given by Asharam, with no clothes on his body and tears in his eyes.

(Anti-slavery International, 1994). Children are also employed as "ragpickers", domestic labourers

and street sellers. Sushila (aged 14) sells newspapers in the streets of Kathmandu.

She has been in this job for three years and a major problem for her is police harassment:

Sushila says: "When they see police coming, the children have to run away at a lightening speed.

If caught, they are harassed. Police shout at you, call you nasty names, box your ears

and step on and tear your papers."

Sushila´s problems are made worse by the passers by who just gather round her

to look at the papers. "But they don´t buy them, only create problems for me. When they crowd

round me I can´t see the police, if they are coming towards me.

So either I have to run without papers, or get caught and harassed."

Much as she dislikes her job, she has no alternative. Living with her father in the slum,

she has to work to be able to eat. (Dhital, 1994).

More than a million youngsters in Nepal are working in high-risk jobs such as the sex-trade,

mines, stone quarries and the carpet industry. About 4,000 to 5,000 young girls are annually sold to

middlemen who ferry them to the brothels of Bombay.

The more fortunate kids are sold as mistreated servants.

For some private organizations on a mission to attack these problems,

Nepal is also a place where a little effort can make a lot of difference...