“At 5 years of age, when other children struggle at nursery to learn A, B, C, D….Yasmin Khatun has to struggle from 5 in the morning to 11 at night mopping floors, fetching water, washing clothes, washing dishes, grinding spices, cutting vegetables and polishing shoes at the home of her employer for Rs 400 a month. Yasmin smiles when employer’s child dresses up for school, when she is caressed by her parents and plays with her friends. Yashmin has dreams….but she has orders to comply”
There are more that 50 thousand children like Yashmin who are employed as domestic workers in the city of Kolkata. These children are invisible and are most vulnerable to all forms ofexploitation and abuse – physical, emotional and sexual. These children do not have access to ucation, work long hours, do not have any recreational facilities, are subjected to verbal abuse, excess work load and are deprived of love care and affection that jeopardizes their physical, mental, educational or social development.
Child Domestic Workers are not recognized as “workers” by the civil society and it is frequently considered charitable to provide employment to children as domestics. Besides the fact that there is cultural acceptability attributed to domestic work very often parents believe that it promises better prospects for their children. It is not appreciated that employing children has a strong economic logic; people get more work for less money!
The Child Labour Prevention Act which was amended on 10th of October 2006 banned children under 14 working as domestic servants a punishable offence. Ironically still West Bengal is one of states having highest concentration of child domestic worker.
TRAFFICKING AND CHILD DOMESTIC WORKERS
Homes in cities like Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, employ ‘live in’ domestic workers, the majority of whom come from West Bengal Bihar, Jharkand; or Orissa. ‘Agents’ provide the links between employers and employees and it is reported that many of these girls are trafficked/bonded in connivance with their parents. The Government of Delhi in 2006 estimated that in Delhi alone there were 700,000 girls working in homes Allurement of employment is given by the middleman to families of children to work as domestics in the home of the rich in the cities. The reality is that even as many of these children do work as domestics, many of them are trafficked into worse forms of labour including commercial sex work. The issue of Child Domestic Work is closely linked to issues of trafficking in children, child sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation of children.
CHILD DOMESTIC WORK AND MISSING CHILDREN
Many of the children who come from their villages to cities for domestic work with the agents loose contact with their families and go missing. A recent study by Save the Children in three blocks of Sandeshkhali I, Sandeshkhali II and Patharpratima in North 24 Parganas shows that in
the last three years 3,429 children were sent outside their places of domicile for work of whom 271 went missing. The problem of missing children is in rise from West Bengal, National Crime Records Bureau says that 16000 children are missing from West Bengal.
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