THE GRAVEL QUARRY - Stolen Childhoods (sitios de interés)
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Media Voices for Children posted a photo:
ALL DAY GIRLS FILL AND EMPTY HEAVY BASKETS OF ROCK IN ORISSA, INDIA
ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods
Gravel Quarries are a common sight in Orissa and other states in India. The children that work here are exploited 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Their world consists only of these piles of rocks, dust and back breaking work. At night many sleep in the open or in makeshift shelters where sanitary conditions are nonexistent. There are no schools here, and for many there is no family. Some of the children working here have been trafficked from other areas where their parents have been forced to either sell themselves or their children into debt bondage (Slavery) or, if they are lucky enough not to be bonded, are dependent on the meager wages that these children can provide.
The work is extremely brutal, hazardous, abusive sometimes lethal. Working all day in the hot sun where temperatures regularly climb above 100F (37C), they carry well over a ton of rock a day, to stand on line exposed to the rock dust from the grinder. The pay, If there is any, is minimal, and conditions fall well below minimum levels required by law and are illegal for children . Nonetheless the kids work, Driven by necessity , often unaware of what they are getting into and sometimes tricked or virtually kidnapped by unscrupulous agents and middlemen. For many, their debt actually increases over time due to dishonest accounting.
The poor pay and hard work are just the beginning. These children tend to be chronically tired from the long hours, increasing the probability of accidents, injuries and deformity. Disease, malnutrition and permanent skeletal injury and silicosis are the common lot. Many die before they reach 30.
Medical treatment is primitive or non-existent
Unable to receive the education to which they are entitled by law, they are powerless to act, and trapped in a continual cycle of grinding poverty.