Child Labour in Nepal (A Case Study of Small Hotels/Restaurant and Teashop ofJanakpur Municipality Dhanusha District,Nepal)

Abstract

The issue of child labour is global, quite critical and has been graining new dimension and a lot ofdiscussion in the recent times. The bitter reality of world today is directly effecting the growth in thenumber of child labour and increasing child exploitation. When we speak in the mass meeting andwriting essays that “Children are future of the nation, builders of the nation, twinkling stars of thenation” and so on, but those who was takingeven do not care about what is happening to those childrenat present. Children predominantly work for economic and social reasons. Children work because their familiesare poor, mostly as a result of inadequate access to productive assists like jobs, credit or land. Theywork because they perceive that the rewards received as being a labour is greater than that fromeducation in economic terms because quality of education is inadequate. Today's children are the future of the nation. So, they should get ample opportunity to developthemselves physical, socially as well as mentally. Though there are many governments as well as non-government organization working to solve the problem against of child labour, yet they have not beenable to obtain the desire goals to benefit the children from this problem. Therefore this study is donewith four objectives, viz, to find out the socio-economic condition of the child labour in small hotels,restaurant and tea-shops, their education status, their existing situation and to suggest appropriatemeasures for the improvement of their situation. Most of the data used in this study are taken from primary source and they are analyzed by usingdescriptive method. Structured questionnaire have been asked to the children working in hotels,restaurant and tea-shops, non-participation method was also done to get information on the course ofthe data collection. Collected data have been analyzed, presented in table and graph and from the dataanalysis, major findings have been derived with recommendation. From the study, it was found that problem of child labour start when agriculture income is not sufficient to sustain the whole family in the rural areas due to lack of alternative employment opportunities. Most of the child labourswere found to be between the age of 9-12 concentrated in urban areas. Lower caste (Shah Teli) children were found more involved as child labour during the course of study. They werefond working for more than 12 hours and the main reason in the increaseof child labour was due topoverty, lack of education and poor economic condition of the parents. After analyzing the situation of children and their problems, this study has recommended that ifeducation support, poverty alleviation programs and appropriate government policy are implement, itwould help to bring drastic change in the issue of child labour. Children when given education will getmore opportunities in the future and thus the problem of child labour can be solved. Apart from thispoverty alleviation programs and appropriate government policies are also important milestones tosolve the problem of child labour in our country.