Night entertainment industry in bad light

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: An International Labour Organisation report has pointed that most of the girls and women working in the night entertainment industry in the Kathmandu Valley suffer sexual exploitation. Most of the estimated 13,000 girls and women working in this industry (cabin restaurants, dance bars, dohari restaurants and massage parlours) are forced to engage in sexual activities and are vulnerable to trafficking.

The ILO found that nearly half of the entertainment workers entered the industry before 18. Of the country’s 7.7 million children aged between five and 17 years, 3.14 million (40.4 per cent) children are engaged in some form of, a great majority in rural areas. And two-thirds of the working children are below the age of 14.

Half of the working children (1.6 million) are child, the report goes, pointing that child is likely to interfere with children’s education, harm them physically, mentally, spiritually, morally and hamper social development.

The report points that 6.12 children are engaged in hazardous work. More girls than boys work, and 60 per cent of children in hazardous work are girls.

The decrease in child in some sectors, such as in carpet making, stone quarries, portering, bonded and children’s association with armed forces or groups, is overshadowed by an increase in child in the age group 15-17, according to the report.

Furthermore, new sectors are emerging and there has been an increase in children’s involvement in adult entertainment and sex industry, street vending and highway hawking, kiln, home-based work and motorbike and bicycle repair in various parts of the country.

The report has listed poverty, inadequate education, legal and employment structures, little knowledge and awareness of society at large and parents in particular, social and cultural practices, including gender-related discrimination, lack of legal policies, framework and their enforcement as major factors behind child and its related consequences.