October 2, 2012: The US labor department has issued a list of 21 Indian-made products
that use child or forced labor. Made-in-India garments and embellished textiles are
among the top products in the list with the department saying that there is "evidence
of labor abuses in a variety of different forms of textile embellishment, beyond the
production of zari."
Although manufacturers of the two items had petitioned
for their deletion from the list, the report released late last week has refused to
do so. While there are no estimates of the level of child labor involved, the list
covers several textile products from yarn to fabrics and garments.
It also
includes carpets, brassware, incense sticks, stones, locks, fireworks and rice. In
its annual listings for 2012, the US labour department said it is estimated that at
least 57,000 children aged between five and 17 years are working in the carpet industry
in India, Pakistan and Nepal.
An International Labour Organization report had
said that at least 55 per cent of the forced labor was in south Asia. It listed seven
cases where there were instances of forced labor, which included bricks, carpets,
hybrid cottonseed, embellished textiles, garment, rice and stones.
Globally,
production of cotton, sugarcane and coffee has seen maximum instances of use of child
labor. For the last four years, the department has been releasing an annual list of
goods manufactured in foreign countries, often seen as a form of non-trade barrier
to exports, which now covers 134 items.