G. Arora - Life and Death for Little Childen at the Brick Kilns of West Bengal
Kolkata: On February 14, Chandni Rajbanshi –
three years old – was playing catch with her cousin Swapna. They raced through
the Teena Brick Works in Pundaooh, in the Hooghly district of West Bengal,
where their father Uday Rajbanshiwas a labourer. It was Sunday morning and
most of the kiln-workers were resting.
Ten-year-old Swapna
had caught up with Chandni, and lifted her in her arms, when she stepped on a
plastic sheet – the lid of a furnace, which split and dropped both girls
into the flames. It required a backhoe excavator to lift out their remains
four hours later. All that could be found was a hip-bone. The accident might
even have gone unnoticed except for another child playing nearby who saw the
two girls fall.
“Had the child not
witnessed that, everything would have been brushed off by lodging a missing
complaint at the police station,” Uday Rajbanshi, Chandni’s father, told The
Wire. “We would have lived in hope that the girls were only missing and
would return to us. The endless visits to the police and the apathy of cops
would have left us even more frustrated.”
When we met Uday Rajbanshi at
Teena Brick Works, a few days after the accident, all he was asking for was a
few thousand rupees to go home to Bihar with his wife and two other children.
His co-workers said that he had lost an earning member of the family: He and
his wife Soni Devi had adopted Swapna, their niece, after her own father died.
She would help at work-sites by fetching water or molding the mud.
“The legal system and
endless court battles is not for the poor people like us,” Uday said. “Our
dreams are limited to arranging a meal a day for the family. I’d rather return
home with some money to look after my children than run after justice which I
know I will never get.”
A two-member district
child protection team had visited the spot and reported to the district
magistrate that children were working in hazardous conditions here, with no
health or safety provisions. “We wrote to the administration that laws were
completely violated – both for adults and children working at the kilns,” said
Harik Banik, one of the team members. “We also found that children had no
access to education and most of them suffered from malnutrition. The labourers
were denied of gratuity and other service-related benefits.”
Soni Devi, Chandni’s
mother, expanded on the allegation. “They refuse to make payment unless we use
our children to expedite the work,” she said, wiping tears from here yes. “The
job is seasonal, so owners want to get maximum bricks manufactured. We and our
children worked like slaves, more than ten hours a day in the sun.”
The family’s
apprehensions about the justice system seemed to be confirmed by the apathy of
the district administration… read more:
