children to school and not to engage them in employment in domestic works or other
employments.89 It is only natural that people in a desperate situation would resort to
desperate measures and the fear of legal sanctions can hardly be an effective deterrent in
preventing them from acting in violation of legal provisions. In other words, the factors
driving children to sacrifice the innocence of their childhood and work in the domestic or
industrial sectors are mainly economic and if these economic factors cannot be addressed,
legislations punishing parents or guardians for engaging their children in paid
employment would fail to address the real factors contributing to employment of children
as workers. Thus, sticks (legislations proscribing employment of children below 12
years) would only be effective if they are accompanied by carrots (incentives for not
taking up paid employment below 12 years) for the parents or in case of children living
on their own, for them directly. The efforts of some non-government organizations
(NGOs) which have succeeded in affording education to working children, though
sporadic and limited to some areas of Bangladesh only, illustrates that such efforts can
succeed.90
The obligation of the employer to pay the cost of treatment or compensate for
diseases, injuries and the likes sustained by workers in the formal sector is a recognized
legal norm. Hence, there is strong moral imperative for extension of this principle to the
domestic works, but it should be borne in mind that the liability of an employer of a
domestic worker towards her/his employees for injuries, diseases or the likes, would be
an unspecified sum and can at times be of such a large amount that satisfying such claim
would make an average employer broke. In such a case, the obligation of an employer
towards her/his domestic worker can stand in the way of performing the obligation of
maintaining dependants in her/his own family. In some cases, an employer may have so
initiatives is that although they may cover the cost of education, they are not necessarily able to substitute
the income generated from employment of children.
89
The need for such an incentive has also been recognized by the HCD in ASK v Bangladesh, above note
8, at para 20 where it said that ‘the education system has to be more attractive for the poorest citizens, at
least by providing a level of income for the family which will not require the children to go to work.’
90
Ibid.
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