Stories of Change
Anzir Ahmed, a fair trade artisan at Tara Projects
Anzir Ahmed - ex child labourer
Child labour is an issue that Tara Projects, a Trade Aid trading partner in India, works hard to educate about and work towards eradicating. Tara has collected footage using a hidden camera in small workshops in slum areas of Delhi where children make jewellery. They work 11 hours a day and receive only 1000 Rupees/month (about NZ$30). Other children were making Christmas tree decorations. The heat in the rooms was, they estimated, 45 degrees Celsius, and it is in these rooms that the children work, eat and sleep. Moon, the General Manager of Tara Projects told the education tour that child labour of this kind is very common in the unorganised sector in India.
The education tour visited a fair trade jewellery making business and there met a man, Anzir Ahmed, who had once been a child labourer working in Delhi in very dangerous conditions…conditions which eventually led to him catching tuberculosis. Sadly, this story is common in Delhi, both the use of children involved in the metal plating industry, and the high incidence of tuberculosis as a result. Anzir worked in a small room with no ventilation, and the waste from the process was never disposed of properly putting himself and the communities they lived in at risk. Fortunately since this time, there has been a ban on these workshops in the city. The fair trade group that Anzir now works with pour their waste into concrete wells in the ground that receive treatment before disposal.
Since joining Tara Projects, Anzir has received five years of training in electroplating. It is a technical job which requires a great amount of skill, and Anzir is now training an assistant to help with the work. Anzir earns more than six times what he did previously. He now works six days a week in a spacious and well-ventilated workshop at Taja 8 making jewellery for Tara Projects.
At Taja 8, the casting and silver plating equipment they use was funded by a Trade Aid capacity building grant in 2004. This money is channelled from NZAID through to Trade Aid groups. Mohammed Younus, the manager of the group, said, “Thank you Trade Aid for the casting plant and the silver plating equipment. Our capacity has risen and we are now doing all the silver plating for all the Tara Projects’ artisans. We have plans to expand further and to enlarge the plant to accommodate more specialised colour treating. We want to be sustainable so we can increase the number of people we employ from two to fifty-two. It is good to keep artisans in the countryside as most young people now are going to the cities for work.”
As part of their effort to eradicate child labour and to make sure that children of artisans receive an education, Tara has built eight schools in different areas around Northern India. They pay for teachers, books and lunch. For many it can be too expensive to go to the government schools which cost 200 rupees/month (NZ$6) so they miss out completely.
The education tour visited a fair trade jewellery making business and there met a man, Anzir Ahmed, who had once been a child labourer working in Delhi in very dangerous conditions…conditions which eventually led to him catching tuberculosis. Sadly, this story is common in Delhi, both the use of children involved in the metal plating industry, and the high incidence of tuberculosis as a result. Anzir worked in a small room with no ventilation, and the waste from the process was never disposed of properly putting himself and the communities they lived in at risk. Fortunately since this time, there has been a ban on these workshops in the city. The fair trade group that Anzir now works with pour their waste into concrete wells in the ground that receive treatment before disposal.
Since joining Tara Projects, Anzir has received five years of training in electroplating. It is a technical job which requires a great amount of skill, and Anzir is now training an assistant to help with the work. Anzir earns more than six times what he did previously. He now works six days a week in a spacious and well-ventilated workshop at Taja 8 making jewellery for Tara Projects.
At Taja 8, the casting and silver plating equipment they use was funded by a Trade Aid capacity building grant in 2004. This money is channelled from NZAID through to Trade Aid groups. Mohammed Younus, the manager of the group, said, “Thank you Trade Aid for the casting plant and the silver plating equipment. Our capacity has risen and we are now doing all the silver plating for all the Tara Projects’ artisans. We have plans to expand further and to enlarge the plant to accommodate more specialised colour treating. We want to be sustainable so we can increase the number of people we employ from two to fifty-two. It is good to keep artisans in the countryside as most young people now are going to the cities for work.”
As part of their effort to eradicate child labour and to make sure that children of artisans receive an education, Tara has built eight schools in different areas around Northern India. They pay for teachers, books and lunch. For many it can be too expensive to go to the government schools which cost 200 rupees/month (NZ$6) so they miss out completely.
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