Children grow tobacco in Bangladesh

Although children are banned from tobacco production in Bangladesh, a large number of them are to be found working on tobacco farms and in bidi factories, according to a story on bdnews24.com.

The results of a National Board of Revenue survey have indicated that about 75,000 workers are employed in the country’s 195 bidi factories.

In the northern district of Lalmonirhat alone, the story says, 21,000 workers work in nine bidi factories and almost 70 percent of those workers are children between the ages of four and 14.

In the neighboring Rangpur district, half of the 40,000 workers in the district’s 30 bidi factories are children between the ages of four and 12.

But many more children, about whom there is no reliable data, are believed to work with their families on tobacco farms or help in rolling bidis.