Feature Stories

Meeting A Child Labourer While I was in Jodphur Rajasthan, India, I chanced upon a local student, Gajendra, who invited us to his town. Through his help as a translater, I was able to talk to a few of his friends who are child labourers. One of them is 9 year-old Mukesh. He has been working since he was 6 as a shoemaker, dealing mostly with a machine that sand-papers rubber soles. With some help from the locals, I was told that working continuously with the machine without any proper mask (none provided for the child labourers) can lead to Tuberculosis.

Gavendra [left] translating for Mukesh [centre]

This Will Be His Childhood Besides the hazardous working conditions, non-schooling children works between 13 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. Mukesh is still in school but not for long once he completes his 4th grade class in a year's time. He expressed his desire to receive education and to study in the university one day but for children like him, the chances are close to none. A typical day for him is as follows. Waking up at 6am, he attends school from 7 to 12 noon and begins work at 1pm. This is last till 9 pm at night after which he goes to bed at 10 pm only to start the day the same way again, 7 days a week. Both his brothers aged 13 and 14 are working and are not schooling, having completed their 4th grade classes while his sisters do embroidery as a living as they are prohibited from working out of home. His mother cleans pots in the town and his father chooses to be unemployed.

A child sanding rubber-soles without a mask, exposing himself to rubber dust everyday.

We Can Help One Mukesh is just one of the estimated 250 million child labourers around the world. Let us not treat them as part of the statistics. While Mukesh is 'fortunate enough' to be able to cope with having food everyday, the fatal effects of his work may surface in his later years. Like most of the children in the town, he is born with no options available to him and leading a life as ours is probably incomprehensible to him. While we may not be able to change the world, let us at least try to help change the world for one.

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