NEPAL - Bricks and Child Labor

"Can earthquake-stricken Nepal eliminate brick industry’s reliance on child labor?" PBS NewsHour 6/8/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Heavy lifting is a way of life in Nepal.  But the 250,000 workers -- many of them children -- manning the Himalayan country’s brick kilns suffer on a different level, toiling in terrible conditions and earning less than one cent per brick.  In collaboration with the Christian Science Monitor, special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on efforts to reform Nepal’s critical brickmaking industry.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour):  Heavy lifting is a way of life in this Himalayan country, but workers in Nepal’s brick kilns are in a league of their own.

Here, work is an endless cycle of loads that weigh more than the laborers who carry them, of polluted, oppressive conditions, grinding coal to stoke kilns that must be kept alive at some 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit round the clock, of molding clay into raw bricks that feed the ovens.

TILOOK MOKTAN, Nepal (through interpreter):  You don’t use your brains to do this work.  It’s just physical labor, but we have no choice.  We have debts to pay.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  Tilook Moktan and his wife, Rina, say life is a never-ending cycle of debt for medical bills, for just running the household, they say, and to put their children in school.

TILOOK MOKTAN (through interpreter):  I want to see that my children are educated, that they complete their higher education.  Work is too tough in the brick sector.

MICHAEL HOLTZ, Christian Science Monitor:  They will get up at midnight, before it gets too hot, work until dawn, sleep for a few hours, get up, start molding more bricks, and do it again the next night.

ANN HERMES, Christian Science Monitor:  It’s physically demanding at all aspects.  And that’s why I think its startling to see children.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  We partnered with Christian Science Monitor reporter Michael Holtz and photographer Ann Hermes, who took these still photographs, on a story we found especially relevant now in this earthquake-ravage country about an industry notorious for trapping children and families in poverty.

MICHAEL HOLTZ:  I think we really wanted to get a sense of, now that reconstruction is finally getting under way in Nepal, and demands for bricks is going to go so high, what — how that would affect the brick kiln industry itself, in terms of, would there be increases in child labor, increases in bonded labor?

EARTHQUAKES - Nepal, the Reconstruction Blockage

"How politics got in the way of needed Nepal earthquake relief" PBS NewsHour 4/25/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  One year ago, the first of two massive earthquakes ripped through Nepal, killing more than 8,000 people.  Some $4 billion of assistance was pledged to the rebuilding effort, but political gridlock and corruption have left the displaced survivors to largely fend for themselves.  Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour):  Kathmandu still bears scars from the quakes, but many people in Nepal's bustling capital have pushed the rubble aside and started rebuilding their homes and lives.

That's not possible in the quake's worst-hit regions, villages high up in the rugged Himalayan landscape, places that were hard to reach even before the disasters struck.  Most people here were displaced into makeshift camps miles away in valleys miles away.

On April 25, 2015, the village of Mailung literally slid out of existence; 38 people died instantly as boulders rained down from the mountainside.  Five bodies have never been recovered from under them.

Parma Singh Tamang ran a grocery store and tailoring business in this abandoned community once home to 400 people.  The remnants from his shops peek out from under tons of granite.  Two daughters-in-law and two grandchildren perished here.  Others in the large extended family that lived here barely escaped.

PARMA SINGH TAMANG, Displaced Resident (through interpreter):  When they heard the loud rumbling, they were very confused and ran down by the river.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  Down the street is the spot where Selnam Tamang lived.  She wasn't home on that fateful day.  She was visiting her mother, leaving her four children with her in-laws and eldest child, Asmita.

SELNAM TAMANG, Displace Resident (through interpreter):  Her grandfather was cooking fish, and all the family was gathered in the main floor area, but Asmita didn't like fish, so she climbed to the second floor of the house.

Then, suddenly, the earthquake came, and the whole house fell, and she was thrown some distance away.  But the whole family, they were crushed.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  Including two younger daughters and infant son.  She did manage to rescue their pictures.

I'm really sorry.

Their current situation stokes the despair.  Most people in the camp say they have no money and have received little assistance to rebuild.  Selnam Tamang scrapes by on about $3 a day as a daily laborer, working about 10 days each month.  And conditions in the metal-roofed shacks are not healthy, says 12-year-old Asmita, who is learning English.