We live in Brick Kilns

In Bangladesh, the oppression of human rights and social injustice tragically converge in the brick kilns, where a staggering percentage of child laborers endure grueling days. Here, innocence is sacrificed at the altar of survival. Bangladesh has one of the highest numbers of child laborers compared to many other developing countries. In the country's brick kilns, 86 percent of child workers toil for more than 10 hours a day.

The children working in brick kilns are primarily engaged in mixing clay, cutting raw bricks, digging clay, loading bricks in and out of the kiln, loading bricks onto trucks, and arranging bricks to dry. Kiln operators and their agents target poverty-stricken villages and urban slums to recruit these unskilled laborers, as the tasks require no special skills. Children, who can be hired at a nominal wage, are easy targets for these agents. Since brick-making is a seasonal business, low-income families from rural areas often send their children to work in the kilns as cheap, contractual labor, earning between BDT 6,000 and 8,000 per month. These children earn only Tk 100 for carrying 1,000 bricks. They endure long hours, hazardous conditions, and the constant strain on their tiny bodies, all for a pittance that barely sustains them. Their dreams, overshadowed by the daily fight for survival, are molded into the bricks they shape with tired hands.

But what happens when it rains or when the kilns are not operating? These vulnerable children face even more complicated realities during the rainy season or when kilns stand idle. Some push through the downpours to stave off hunger, while others remain idle at home. Their futures are as fragile as the bricks they labor to produce. In this cycle of poverty and social neglect, their childhoods disappear into the relentless grind of labor.