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Can you find it in your heart to help us save young girls like Surya and Bhuvana from slavery in southern India?
My name is Karuppasamy and I work at the EveryChild field office here in the Tamil Nadu area of southern India. I am writing today to ask you to donate to help us rescue young girls from the misery of working as virtual slaves in dangerous conditions that you would find horrifying.
The tragedy of child labour in India is one you may have already heard about. This sickening practice robs many thousands of children of their right to enjoy a childhood. All too often it results in children being separated from their families. Instead of going to school and playing with friends they are locked away in factories where they are forced to live and work.
That’s what happened to Surya and Bhuvana. These two 14-year old girls are part of the Dalit caste. Regarded as the absolute lowest section of Indian society – the “untouchables” – they are denied basic rights, not allowed to own land and can only get the most low-paid work. Discrimination keeps them in crippling poverty.
What is bonded labour?
Many poor families end up in debt to the landowners whose land they live and work on, caught in a trap of exploitation. Their whole families, including children, are forced to work, paying in labour for spiralling interest on debts that grow, and that can never be paid off. It is an oppressive system called “bonded labour” – keeping families in virtual slavery for generations. The real tragedy is when parents are so desperate that they make the agonising choice to send their children away to work in an attempt to help pay off their debts.
Surya and Bhuvana are from such a family, and were forced to work at a nearby spinning mill, making yarn for export. There are many spinning mills like this in my region, taking advantage of up to 500 girls in each. In some villages, most families have daughters working in terrible conditions.
Surya and Bhuvana were promised between just 30,000 and 50,000 rupees (£400-£670), but only after they had worked there for three years – less than 40 pence a day. Like girls in all these factories, they were paid nothing upfront and nothing throughout. If girls leave the mill before three years are up, as most do due to the appalling conditions they are forced to work and live in, they receive nothing.
Girls are kept in hostels, under the tight, secretive supervision of male guards, which leaves them open to physical and sexual abuse. Little or no family contact is allowed, further magnifying the girls’ isolation. Surya and Bhuvana had to sleep cramped into a 10-foot square room with six more girls, and sharing a toilet with 40 others. This whole situation is illegal. And of course, while girls are at the mill, their education stops, further damaging their chances of escaping poverty.
There is no other word for it, they are slaves.
Surya and Bhuvana worked there for a year and a half and three months respectively. They would probably still be there now, but after six other girls died from food poisoning, including one who shared a room with Bhuvana, they were too terrified to stay and summoned up the courage to leave. EveryChild was able to help them and their families, to stop them going back.
Why should I donate?
By donating today your kindness will enable us to bring more girls safely home to their families, so they no longer has to endure such horrendous, exploitative conditions. Now they are back with their families. With EveryChild’s support Bhuvana is going to school. When I spoke to her she told me ‘I felt sad at the mill, now I’m happy’. However Surya contracted TB at the mill, so we have arranged treatment until she is well enough to join her friend at school. We also introduced a credit scheme in their village. This community scheme means families can pool their money to fund loans and stops families having to send children away to work.
Long-term it is our aim to close down the mills and prosecute the owners. What they are doing is not only immoral but also illegal and they must be stopped. I gratefully ask you to donate today. Your gift will free a child from a life of misery, let them live safely with their family and go to school. Something every child deserves.
Yours sincerely
Karuppasamy Raman
EveryChild India
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