CHILDREN OF BLACK DUST is about the same group of people who are also part of my story for «Tales from a Globalizing World».“

Children of Black Dust

Using her hands to clean the carbon rods from used dry-cell batteries, Marjina holds her young child over her legs and tries to put her child to sleep. Marjina migrated to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh with her five children after her husband died. Now she works in a workshop that recycles used batteries by the river Buriganga in Dhaka. Four out of five of her children are girls. Wiping her tears off, Marjina said, "Regardless of how hard I or my children work, we accumulate debt every month. I don't know what to do. I have nothing that I can sell to pay off my debts."
In Bangladesh, life, like labor, is cheap, and this is one of the main reasons for the vicious cycle of poverty and resulting exploitation to continue. On the outskirts of Dhaka across the river Buriganga that separates village-like slums from the capital city, several workshops specialize in recycling different materials found in dumpsites.
One of these workshops deals specifically with the recycling of dry-cell batteries. The industry employs hundreds of women and children. All day long these women and children break open thousands of used dry-cell batteries to get tiny pieces of metal out of them. They collect the carbon rods and other metal objects for recycling. Depending on how much work they do, each woman or a child earn between 6 to15 Taka (10 to 25 US Cents) per day. It could take a young child 4-12 days to earn just one US dollar.
Like Marjina, many women bring their young children to work so they can look after them at the same time as there is no other safe place for the children to stay and be cared for. The environment in and around these workshops is full of carbon dust and other waste material. Children play in these polluted areas until they are tired and then fall asleep. Most children suffer from chest and eyes infections.
The working conditions of these workshops are dismal and depressing. The makeshift cabins where the recycling work takes place are often lit with only one tiny 60 watt bulb or a small window that provides minimal lighting. Everything including walls, roof and even children's face are covered with black dust. Often the only thing visible are their white sparkling eyes or red shiny lips as they constantly lick their lips to keep them wet, literally eating and inhaling millions of dust particles from recycled batteries. Occasionally, beautiful sets of white teeth are evident as children laugh and play with one another, cracking jokes and teasing one another.
Visually as well as in reality, the situation of these young workers is so bad, it is easy to dramatize to create a sensational report. However one has to be careful, as doing so could harm these children even more. Child labour, as UNICEF's the State of the World's Children report explains, is a complex, and often a misunderstood problem. The perception that most children in developing countries work primarily to produce consumer goods such as clothing and toys for consumers in rich countries is simply a myth. In fact, only a minority of children work in the export sector. The majority of children work in areas that does not make headlines; selling candies, flowers or newspapers at traffic lights or other forms of hazardous labours.