Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Child miners: India's crying shame...

Every morning at the crack of dawn, 13-year-old Sagar Kujur joins many others of his age and even younger to trudge towards the coal pits of Ramgarh in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India.

Armed with shovels and cane baskets, they tip-toe over the jagged surface, settle down in a corner and start digging a hole through rocks of solid coal. A few back-breaking hours later, their baskets fill up with pieces of coal that had been chipped away, and they hurry to the nearest market to sell their day’s treasure.

Children like Kujur, blackened with coal dust, serve as daily reminders to the dark secrets of the 15,000-odd coal mines in the state.

Jharkhand is mineral-rich, but a majority of its people is dirt poor. As in the rest of India where, according to UNICEF, some 28 million children work to supplement their families’ meagre income, 400,000 children aged between five and 14 work in Jharkhand. Given the proximity to mines, many children work in them.

It is dangerous to work in the mines, particularly those that are underground where fatal cave-ins are frequently reported. But their penury leaves the children with few choices. "I know there is danger in this work, but at the end of the day, it is the money that matters," Kujur said. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. The children that labour in the coal mines of India...
  2. India's cheated and exploited child slaves...
  3. The slave children of Bangladesh (Photostory)
  4. The $34 billion Coalgate scandal: will India ever be able to tackle corruption?
  5. Indian government accused of 'looting the country' over coal mining...
  6. A dark night of the soul for India...
  7. India loses $210 billion in coal sales in "mother of all scams"

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