question_answer 11)

Mention the hazards of working in the glass bangle industry.  

Answer:

(Child labour implies a situation where children are forced to work in dangerous and unhealthy conditions that will most likely scar them physically, emotionally, and mentally for the rest of their life. The glass and glassware industry in India is concentrated in Firozabad. These factories produce a number of glass items, such as bangles, chandeliers, wine glasses, beads, crockery, bulbs, and cut glass items. The industry employs about 8,000 to 50,000 children some as young as eight years old. The factory floor is typically an inferno, due to intense heat (1400-1600° Celsius), poor ventilation, broken glass, dangling electric wires, and no protective equipment whatsoever.   Often, glass splinters injure the workers, and pieces of glass cut into the bare feet of children; The children bump into each other and may scorch their bodies. Children are seen walking barefoot over glass littered floors, some with scarred eyes and burnt scalps.   Child workers in the glass factories in Firozabad suffer from mental retardation, asthma, bronchitis, eye problems, liver ailments, skin burns, chronic anemia, and tuberculosis. Studies conducted at the Maulana Azad Medical College, in New Delhi, show genetic damage in the body cells of the labourers who have worked close to furnace heat for three years or more. Children working in factories often suffer from emotional, mental, and psychological scars. Their childhood gets lost.