Slavery

In India, the desperate conditions which affect the many people living here, which is affecting the urban poor as well as the rural children and people. There are a growing number of children which are forced into working, in what only can be described as subhuman conditions, in sweatshops throughout India. It is mostly children, who are exploited and forced to make clothing with brand names eg. Baby clothes, in these sweatshops which lack basic hygiene and facilities. These children are deprived of any sort of education, most have never been to school. A lot of the children drop out of school at a very early age, as the money is needed in order to support their family.

The number of child laborers is not known for sure, but it is estimated that around 11 million in 1991, who were between the age of 5 and 14 were working in sweatshops throughout India.

These children are expected to work in the vilest of conditions. In degrees of heat that could be compared to what you would feel if you were taking a sauna. There is no air conditioning in the place where they are working. They are usually surrounded by box’s and work on top of one another. There is no toilet facilities and the smell from the street below is not pleasant.

A worker whom is forced into making baby clothes often works for around 100 rupees per day, which is about 1 pound sterling. They would be expected to work from around 10 in the morning and would return home around 9pm. These children often return home to no food, and have usually had no lunch break.

In England, these conditions would be unheard of, but because of the poverty in India allows for this sort of work to be carried out. A child who does not work in a sweat shop making baby clothes can often be found out in the street. Looking through rubbish and excrement trying to find something that they can sell to make a little bit of money, which would enable them to get rice to feed there family.

The children who do this sort of work, are often orphans who have no family. Usually the children in India, who have no family, work in hotels working round the clock, doing demeaning jobs for no money. The hotel offers them a place to stay in exchange for there hard work and labour.

A group of girls recently went across to India to work in a number of sweatshops, to research just what conditions these children were working in. They started off at the first work house, which was pretty bad, but was actually the best of the five that they worked at. When they reached there final destination, which was one of the worst that you could expect to find in India. They were shocked in what they found and the conditions, in which these people were working, can only be described as unworkable.

Unfortunately, in order to help the people working in sweatshops in India, the best thing that us as consumers in the UK can do is to carry on buying the products, and hope that one day things will improve for these workers.

The funding for this article was kindly provided by ichbinklein.de who offer Sia Kids and Babykleidung