On her first day of work, Bithi cried. “The first day I felt bad. I thought it wasn’t good. I was too small. I was surrounded by other older people,” she remembers. But that was three years ago, when she was 12. Now, it’s routine – no more tears are spilled.
60 pockets an hour
Every day, Bithi helps create a minimum of 480 pairs of pants for just over $1 USD a day.
“60 pockets an hour,” the 15-year-old behind the sewing machine explains.
Squished inside a second-story room with 20 other Bangladeshi women, the girl hunches over her machine while fluorescent lights beam harshly overhead. As in so many other places, sub-contracting jobs from other larger garment factories – and government policies about child labour – go unheeded.
Trying to make ends meet
It is often common for families in impoverished conditions to take desperate measures in order to simply survive. Bithi’s mother, Feroza, is no exception. She is unapologetic about starting her two oldest daughters in garment factories before they were even teenagers.
Feroza juggled domestic work and ran a bag-making business to support her six children. Still, she couldn’t make ends meet. Food was begged for and borrowed from charitable family members and neighbours. One time, Feroza’s husband was sick and couldn’t work. The family was in a crisis. So she did what her parents did to her when they arrived in Dhaka decades ago – and Bithi has been working ever since.
Dashed dreams
Although Bithi does not complain, she also can’t deny her deep longing to go to school. When Bithi sees other girls her age in their blue and white checkered school uniforms, she admits to feeling “painful, my heart breaks.” At one point, Bithi dreamed of being a doctor, just like her older sister, Doli. But both girls have now put those dreams aside in order to face their hard-hitting reality.
When adults are paid fair wages, children are much more likely to be provided for at home and continue to attend school. Feroza may not hold the power to advocate for her daughters. But we do. You can speak up for Bithi and millions of other children like her. Let’s start by holding Canadian companies with overseas factories accountable for the way their products are made.
Sign the petition asking Canada’s leaders to require that companies report publicly on how they are addressing child labour in their global supply chains.