Bangladesh sets 14 as the minimum age for employment, thus enforcing its commitment to eliminate all layouts of child labor by 2025 and pursuing the current GSP facility in the European Union (EU).
Officials involved say Bangladesh is also designed to endorse the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 138 on Minimum Age on March 21.
To this end, a 15-member commission, led by law minister Anisul Huq, left Dhaka for Geneva to attend the 344th ILO governing body meeting.
State minister for labour Begum Monnujan Sufian is also included among the attendants.
“Bangladesh has fixed 14 as the minimum age for admission to employment,” says a progress report on the National Action Plan (NAP) on the Labour Sector of Bangladesh (2021-2026).
The Bangladesh government formulated the report as a high-powered EU delegation visited Bangladesh from March 14-17 to observe the human and labor rights situation here under its EBA (Everything but Arms) facility.
During the ninth session of the EU-Bangladesh Joint Commission in October 2019, the govt. consented to develop a NAP on Bangladesh’s labor sector.
The final action plan was designed in consultation with the EU and was submitted to it on 01 July 2021.
The NAP is a commitment of Bangladesh to support labor rights and workplace safety in the country.
The time-bound NAP contains specific actions on legal and administrative reforms as well as enforcement of laws, capacity building and promotional activities.
Local rights groups and the ILO have long pressed Bangladesh to ratify the minimum-age convention.
The EU also put the issue of child labor elimination in its guidance, according to them.
a ministry official says that it is critical to specify the minimum age for employment to address child labor. and added that the government is dedicated to eliminating all forms of child labor by 2025.
The fixation of the minimum employment age is part of the regulatory and policy framework for the elimination of child labor.
