A SAD TALE OF CHILD LABOR AND CHILDREN DYING WHILE WORKING IN MICA MINES
Today is 12 June 2020, when across the world we observe the World Day Against Child Labour. Having worked for 20 years in the ILO on child labour and children’s education etc. it is sad then that I must relate – today of all the days – an appalling story of very young children, working in treacherous caves in the mica mines of Bihar and Jharkhand.
Incredulous as it may sound, I am told that some of the working children are as young as 5 or 6 years old and that some of the children die in the mines. What is horrifying is that the children who are as young as five and six are sent into small ill-lit dangerous caves to mine out mica from within them. The children with their tiny malnourished bodies are used to mine out the Mica from the caves because the caves are so small that only children can get into them. The mines are mainly in the four districts of Jamui and Nawada in Bihar and Giridi and Koderma in Jharkhand. These are four adjoining contiguous districts in the two states. While a kilo of mica fetches about Rs. 20 in the market, the children are paid Rs. 5 or 6 a kilo. It is a story that an NGO Janhith Vikas Samithi shared with me a short while ago today. There was a time when the World Day Against Child Labour was observed with great solemnity in India and across the world.
Today while all sorts of days are observed, we seem to have forgotten our children working in dangerous conditions. Children, who should not have been working at all anywhere, but should have been in schools and on playfields. The mica – which is used in the making of artificial jewellery – is mined from the caves on the land which once – and perhaps still – belongs to the Government of India’s Mines Corporation of India Ltd. The mines are no longer operated by Corporation as Mica mining there is no longer commercially viable. But what is really saddening and outrageous is that children die in these mines, due to landslips or perhaps because of lack of oxygen. When a child dies in a cave, the death is literally covered up, with the cave simply filled up and closed and left unused. The death of the child is forgotten. And soon life and child labour goes on as before. Such deaths are not reported because the Police Station is far away and because the local villagers and the parents are not quite sure if there would get any response from the authorities. What is even more astounding is that the Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s Children’s Foundation ‘Bachpan Bacho Andolan’ Save Childhood and the international NGO Terres des Hommes have put up boards in the area, saying that this is a ‘Child Labour Free Zone’!!!How much more ironic can it get…………….?I appeal to the Government of India, the Governments of Bihar and Jharkhand and international agencies, particularly the ILO and UNICEF to step in to effectively and sustainably end this affront against children. It is vital to provide immediately sustainable livelihoods for the parents of the children and good quality free schools for the children. (Photos and Information: Courtesy the Janahita Vikas Samithi)
