The number of children engaged in child labour has reached over 1.776 million, reflecting an increase of 77,203 children in the past nine years, according to a recent child labour survey conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).

While there has been a decline of over 200,000 children, aged 5 to 17 years, working in hazardous sectors, the number of children working in non-hazardous sectors has surged by nearly 300,000.

The BBS report reveals that the percentage of working children has risen to 8.90% in 2022, in comparison to 8.70% recorded in the 2013 survey. Additionally, the proportion of child labour has also increased from 4.30% in 2013 to 4.40% in 2022.

The report further highlights that over 3.7 million children are currently not engaged in any form of labour, which is a positive finding.

According to a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF in June 2021, the number of children in child labour has risen to 160 million worldwide – an increase of 8.4 million children in the last four years – with millions more at risk due to the impacts of COVID-19.

The report titled Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward - warns that progress to end child labour has stalled for the first time in 20 years, reversing the previous downward trend that saw child labour fall by 94 million between 2000 and 2016.

The report points to a significant rise in the number of children aged 5 to 11 years in child labour, who now account for just over half of the total global figure. The number of children aged 5 to 17 years in hazardous work – defined as work that is likely to harm their health, safety or morals – has risen by 6.5 million to 79 million since 2016, the report said.