The Bangladesh Extension Education Services (BEES), a non-governmental organisation, has launched a project to alleviate the plight of the estimated 447 children that are currently working in 30 of Dhaka’s leather tanneries. The project will aim to stop recruitment of minors, remove those children already working and provide them with non-formal or vocational training.

A ceremony was held to launch the project at the Hazaribag Tannery Workers Union office with officials present from leather and exporters’ associations, including Sujeewa Fonseka, chief technical adviser of the International Labour Office in Dhaka.

Mr Fonseka stressed the need for co-operation among factory owners, workers’ unions, NGOs, community leaders and parents to eliminate child labour. He also said he believed that exports of leather and leather goods from Bangladesh would increase if child labour were to be eliminated from the sector.