Rights Column
Child Rights
Slum children have little access to education
Shanu Mostafiz
Shefali spends much of her time taking care of her younger brother. She also has to fetch drinking water for her family from nearly a half-mile away every morning when girls her age go to school.
Shefali, a seven-year-old girl of Rayer Bazar slum in capital Dhaka, also picks abandoned papers and dried leaves for cooking. Then she has to wait for her mother's return who works in different houses of their neighbourhood as a housemaid.
"I used to go to school, but now I cannot for lack of time. Lately the school has been closed. There is another school away from our house. But, if I go to school, there will be no one to take care of my little brother," she says.
Shefali and her younger brother live alone in their shanty, as their mother has to work hard all day long to earn bread and butter. Back home, their mother has little energy to take care of them. More painful is that these children are deprived of father's affection as he left them to marry another woman.
A 2003 Unicef report says 54.5 percent boys and 60.9 percent girls, aged between 6 and 10, go to school from the slums in Dhaka City. Of them, only 2.8 percent slum children go to school when they reach the school age.
The report also reveals an alarming figure that 62.9 percent slum children work more than eight hours a day where 31.5 percent boys and 33.2 percent girls never go to school. When it comes to countrywide statistics, the report shows that 44.8 percent boys and 12.6 percent girls never go to school.
"Around 1.2 crore people live in Dhaka Metropolitan areas where 28.4 lakh people languish in around 4,300 slums. “These slum dwellers are poor and hardly aware about their basic rights. So, the government should do something for improving their lifestyle," says Dr Nazrul Islam, a development expert.
Dr Islam continues: A section of the civil society and some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are working for the development of slum children. Of them, 2-4 NGOs are working on the education of slum children.
Some NGOs are running schools in different city slums with foreign assistance. But there is always a question about the standard of education in those schools as there is a lack of regular monitoring, skilled manpower and education materials.
Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) operates some education centres in slums but these are not enough compared to the growing requirement. But, the schools run by some of the NGOs, including Suravee, UCEP, Ahsania Mission, EMES and Aparajeyo Bangladesh, have already earned appreciation for their success.
Under the circumstances, Unicef and the government have jointly taken some programmes to provide education to slum children and the kids of low-income group families. Around 3.46 lakh children, aged between 10-14 years, have been brought under the programme's first phase while another 2 lakh will be brought in its second phase, says Saidul Haque Milki, Project Officer of Child Development and Education Section.
"We're now planning a pilot project for the children of 6-9 age group. We're providing training to some children who are engaged in stone crashing in Aminbazar area and some child labourers of old Dhaka as an experiment. We've also provided training on beauty treatments to some teenaged girls and some of them are now working in different beauty parlours," says Milki.
According to teachers of some slum education centres, children are interested to read but they cannot do that for various problems. Even, they do not get books in due time of the academic year. Besides, they have to buy a lot of education materials although they cannot afford that. Many schools have even no playground, which is necessary to attract kids.
Ganoshakkharata, another NGO, in a report published in August 2005 revealed that 53.7 percent parents talk about various problems when it comes to sending their kids to school. Around 92.3 percent parents think education is costly while 20.4 percent say children are not interested to go to school for lack of facilities for recreation and educational materials. Above all classrooms in most schools are dirty.
It also says the dropout rate of children has a deep relation with the monthly income of a family. The dropout rate is 80 percent in the families whose monthly income is Tk 1,000 while it is 46.2 percent in the Tk 1,001-2,000 income group, eight percent in that of Tk 2,001-7,000 income group and nearly zero percent in that of Tk 7,000 income group.
Some educationists say economic insecurity and lack of education among the parents are the major obstructions to education of children. Besides, slum eviction, frequent fire and flooding are also the reasons behind the high dropout of slum children. But they hope the schools will get better response from the slum children if those institutions could be given a permanent shape.
Bangladesh is one of the initial signatories to the United Nations Convention on Children Rights, which describes elimination of all forms of discriminations, upholding the rights of children and government's due role in the development of children. So it is time to see whether these rights of the country's children are ensured.
In 2002, according to a Unicef report, the number of child labourers in Bangladesh was around 60 lakh and now it has come close to 1 crore.
"Improvement of lifestyle of slum dwellers is our national problem because of our widespread social discrimination. Education is one of the fundamental rights of children. Not only the government but also the civil society members should sincerely come forward to ensure education for all," says Prof Abdullah Abu Sayeed, a prominent academician.
Source: News Network
