“The impact of Harkin’s Bill in Bangladesh was devastating: garment employers immediately dismissed an estimated 50,000 children from their factories, which accounted for approximately 75 percent of all children in the industry. The children were freed, but actually they were trapped in a harsh environment with no skills, little or no education, and precious few alternatives. A series of follow-up visits by UNICEF, local NGOs, and ILO discovered that the children were looking for new sources of income and found them in work such as stone-crushing, street hustling and prostitution, etc., which are more hazardous than garment production. In some cases, the mothers of dismissed children had to leave their jobs just to look after their children [UNICEF – The State of the world’s children 1997, 60].” “Child Labor in Bangladesh: A Critical Appraisal of Harkin’s Bill and the MOU-Type Schooling Program”, Journal of Economic Issues, December 1999, by Mohammad Mafizur Rahman, Rasheda Khanam, Nur Uddin Absar
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