Photojournalist Claudio Montesano Casillas has taken photographs depicting a shocking reality about the working conditions of children inside different factories in Bangladesh.
There are thousands of children in the country who are required to work for long hours just to stitch labels into the clothes. Most of the children do not have the luxury of going to school. They are tasked with jobs like embroidery, dyeing fabric and machine cleaning.
Many unregistered sweatshops still exist and are not thoroughly inspected, as reported in DailyMailUK.
The factories that produce for the local and Indian market also supply clothes for international brands but this is done through subcontracts. This is what makes it challenging for companies to find out where the clothes are from.
The photographer has captured the absence of safety regulations in the factories as well as the difficult tasks that the children have to undergo. He visited the factories as part of the Old Dhaka tour but ended up surprised by the situations.
An unregistered factory only has a room with at least 15 sewing machines. These places usually don't have any emergency exits, fire safety plans or even extinguishers because these are not properly inspected and therefore do not undergo the national standards for buildings safety evaluations.
The photographer said,"Inside these factories garment workers work six to six and a half days per week from dawn till far after dusk for a minimum wage. The workers from these factories sleep inside or rent rooms next to these factories. They come from villages to cities seeking for employment and dreaming of a better life."
Based on UNICEF's findings, about a million children aging 10-14 years-old, work as a child laborer in Bangladesh. They earn just a tiny amount of £6.50 a month. The most that they can get is £16.00.
The government has ordered about 37 factories to stop operations because they were not able to successfully address the safety issues of their establishments. 209 were issued warnings that they will be closed if they don't do the same.
