Deliberately kept illiterate!

In most of the country's tea gardens, children are encouraged to provide child labour instead of going to school.

This was revealed at a workshop titled "ILO's Tea Sector Intervention in Bangladesh", which concluded at the Chittagong Chamber auditorium here yesterday.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

This trend has to be changed not only for betterment of labourers but also for development of the tea industry, speakers at the workshop said.

ILO GENPROM (Gender Promotion) Linkage, organised the two-day workshop in collaboration with GENPROM-WEEH (Women's Empowerment through Employment and Health).

Zahin Ahmed, Executive Director of Friends In Village Development in Bangladesh (FIVDB), was the chief guest at the opening session, chaired by Dr Wajeedul Islam Khan, General Secretary of Bangladesh Trade Union Kendra (BTUK).

Lotta Nycander, Chief Technology Advisor, GENPROM - WEEH, ILO, was the guest of honour. The workshop was conducted by Dr Rana P Satter, ILO Co-ordinator in Bangladesh.

Partners and primary beneficiaries of GENPROM-Linkage project and GENPROM-WEEH Project and media representatives participated in the workshop.

The speakers said the peculiar situation forces tea garden workers to remain workers for generations and deprived of wages and facilities offered by the owners, the discussants said.

The tea garden owners are quite aware of the situation and they also want a change, the speakers said.

Children of tea garden workers have to be educated so that they can seek jobs elsewhere because the increasing number of such illiterate workers can not be employed in gardens, they said.