August 1, 2006; 45 thousand urban working children have new learning opportunities
Dhaka, August 1, 2006: More than 45 thousand urban working children are to benefit from new learning centres which opened around the country today. 1830 learning centres were officially opened for business in Dhaka, Chittagong, Barisal and Sylhet. These learning centres are part of the Government’s second phase of the ‘Basic Education for Hard to Reach Urban Working Children’ (BEHTRUWC) Project. The project in this phase will offer life skills based non-formal education to 200,000 urban working children between the age of 10 and 14, 60 per cent of them girls. UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh Louis-Georges Arsenault welcomed the second phase of the BEHTRUWC project as a timely response to the much needed education and livelihood skills for urban working children. “A million and half of the estimated 7.9 million working children in Bangladesh live in urban areas and 850,000 of them are aged between 10 and 14 years. Many of them work with little or no pay and under hazardous conditions such as brick chippers, industrial and transport sector workers, domestic servants and so on,” said Mr. Arsenault. Eventually a total of 8,000 learning centres will be set up in 2006 and 2007 in six divisional cities of Bangladesh to reach the targeted 200,000 urban working children with a 40 month long life skills based non formal education course. The BEHTRUWC Project Second Phase is being implemented by the Bureau of Non-Formal Education (BNFE) through 20 implementing NGO partners under the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MOPME). UNICEF, Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) are supporting the Bangladesh Government to implement the project. “We greatly appreciate the support of Swedish Sida, Canadian CIDA and the Government of Bangladesh in implementing the project that reaches urban working children with important services and has a long term goal to reduce child labour,” said Mr Arsenault. This follows a successful completion of the first phase which provided basic education to 346,500 urban working children from 1997 to 2004 in six divisional cities of Bangladesh. It is expected that 20,000 working children out of the total 200,000, will be selected for livelihood skills training. For further information please contact:
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