Child labour in kiln industry in Punjab continues to attract criticism from human rights activists and international agencies without going into the economics of this kind of hiring of labour.
The kiln industry employs more than 150,000 men and women, half of them under the age of 15 years, to produce bricks of varying qualities and different price ranges. It is estimated that this industry is one of the major sources of providing sustenance to smaller downstream occupation connected with it.
Workers involved in kiln industry are of two kinds: seasonal and part timers and the contractual. The seasonal workers come from the agricultural tenant community who are available after the sowing and the harvesting seasons are over. They need new jobs to supplement their meager income they get from their work on farms.
The agricultural tenants generally referred to as haris, remain indebted to the owners of farmland who off and on give them loans, provide place to put up a thatched house and protect them from their adversaries. Those haris who are needed in civil and criminal cases, get support from the landowners and at times return their gratitude in terms of cash to be adjusted after harvesting is over or in terms of free of charge service on farmlands.
Besides male members of a tenant's family, the womenfolk look after the household chores of the landowners and from sweeping floor to cooking food they tend livestock. The entire work they do is free of cost and in return of favours they get from the landlords.
Those who work on contractual basis are slightly better off. They do not live under obligations of the farmland owners but continue to remain indebted to contractors. These contractors look after them in times of need and abandon them when the contracts are over. Some of the contractors entangle their labour s in conflicts and criminal cases and force a circumstance on them so that they do not run away. The contractual labour gets on the basis of completion of a piece of work. These workers are common in sugarcane areas.
Such contractual employees do not get enough from their employers to meet the requirement, of lean period. The lean period usually remains there for more than six months when there is neither sowing nor harvesting in progress. During these six months their miseries multiply and create a situation from where it becomes difficult for them to get out. The only possibility is work as labour on daily wages.
Haris, whether seasonal or contractual, so hard pressed and in need of money are always available as kiln labour . The kiln owners are no different than the farm owners and employ them on daily wages. The daily wages for an adult are comparatively more than the wages of a child.
The adults work at kilns as long as they are not called back to work on a farmland. They leave their children to continue to work as long as the loan they have taken from the kiln owner has not been cleared. The children, fourteen years and below including girls of tender age, serve the kiln owner according to the directions of their elders or family members.
From afar the job seems to be easy but to work at a kiln in the scorching sun, in the heat of the day and the burning kiln baking bricks, is tough and toilsome. Many of the children get lifetime diseases here; they get their lungs and eyes affected in the first instance and many either lose their eyesight or fall victims to tuberculosis. The adverse effect on the development of bones is also common in kiln workers.
Female workers of tender age are exposed to exploitation and sexual harassment. Violence against women observed at kilns is of immense magnitude. These kiln-women are to support their families, fulfil the commitments of the male members of their families and to listen to unreasonable demands of the kiln owners.
The sexual abuse of child labour is another dimension, which leave them tortured and tormented as long as they live. Who would take them out of this dilemma? Who would look into the economics of this occupation? Who would provide them freedom from this vicious circle of life that has made them slaves without the shackles of slavery?