Introduction : Child labour is one of the major problems in a developing country such as Bangladesh. It engineers the demolition of futuregenerations. If a child is made to work from a early age, with no scope ofgoing to school, we are gradually narrowing the nations potential to a fewprivileged people of the country. Thus, it is more practical to work at a firmpolicy to gradually reduce it, and set up safe homes for working children. Inthis regard, The Bangladesh government has made a policy commitment tothe issue of child rights. This includes a number of steps taken in recentyears as ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC) in 1991,formulation of the National Policy on Children in 1994 and the National Planof Action for Children 1997-2000. Despite the adoption of these policy measures, it is important to see that these conventions are actually carriedout and that the commitment are met continually.
Definitions of child labour : The child labour has been defined asthe employment of children under a certain age, set by national orinternational child labour laws. ILO Convention 138 sets 15 as the minimum age for admission to full time employment and 13 for lightpart time work. ln countries with insulhciently developed economicsand educational facilities, these ages are 14 and 12 respectively. For all hazardous works, the lower age limit is 18 years.According to Employment of Children Act—1938, amended in 1951, achild under 17 years can not be employed.

Child labour in Bangladesh : Bangladesh has a large number ofchild labour working at several sectors. According to Labour ForceSurvey 1995-96, 10-19 age group working children totalled 16.9 million, which was nearly 19.9 percent of total labour force. TheRegional Conference on child labour held at the beginning of 2001,informed the press that there were a total of 6.3 million child labourers in