By Feizal Samath
KANDY, Sri Lanka — Devi and Ramani left their one- roomed homes in the tea estates at a very young age to work as maids in Colombo. They returned in coffins.
They worked for many years with two families. Both were routinely sexually abused by their "masters" until they became pregnant. The two died in the houses where they worked and their fathers were asked to come and collect the bodies.
Death, they were told, was the result of burns caused by leaking gas stoves. The actual story was that the employers, with the aid of other family members, had poured kerosene on them and set them ablaze because they were pregnant.
"The two fathers told us they were not even allowed to open the coffins. The closed coffins were brought back to the estates and the victims cremated. The fathers, who were each given a bottle of arrack (local liquor) and money, didn't question the employers, believing what they said", said Menaka Kandasamy, a social worker and women's activist.
"The problem is one of ignorance and illiteracy", explained Kandasamy. "The parents of the two children didn't even know the name of the town where the victims worked, although they had been there a number of times."
These two incidents, which occurred in 1995 and 1996 and were not reported to the police, are not unusual. Sri Lanka's famed tea plantations are a source of cheap, child domestic servants for the middle and upper-middle classes.
Poorly paid workers send their children away because it means one less mouth to feed and the promise of additional income. The children work long hours — they are on call 24 hours a day looking after children their own age, carrying heavy loads from the market, cooking and even working as gardeners.
Sexual abuse and harassment, assault and beatings, or being burnt with hot oil or burning wood are part of their daily life.
There are no official figures on child labour in Sri Lanka. Unofficial estimates vary from 100,000 to 500,000 children who are illegally employed, but government officials say this number is exaggerated.
In the dollar-earning plantations, where the workers live in abject poverty, their children are like "slaves at home and outside. They have no rights, no freedom. Education is a luxury, work is compulsory. Incest is accepted", said an aid worker who ran a health clinic for 14 months on a tea plantation.
The problem goes back to the 1860s when the British colonial rulers of Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), shipped in thousands of poor Tamils from south India as cheap labour for tea plantations in the central highlands.
They were housed in barrack-type "line" rooms and barely ventured out of their homes or the tea estates. Invariably, with tea being a labour-intensive industry, the children were also roped in to work from a young age, between 12 and 14 years.
Some were compelled to work in the homes of the British managers of estates as "house boys" or "house girls". Others were sent to work in the homes of their relatives who lived in Colombo or other faraway places.
That practice has since become a lucrative business for so-called agents who find domestic work for plantation children and charge a hefty commission from their parents and employers. Most parents do not realise what they are letting their children in for. In some cases, however, the chance of living apart is an escape for children.
Researcher Chandra Kumaraswamy says children grow up in very bleak conditions on the plantations. Alcoholism, the result of continued economic and social marginalisation of the plantation community, has completely changed the atmosphere within homes, he said in a report on child labour commissioned by the NGO Plan International. "Tension and fear have made children very aggressive ... They want to escape from the family crises and tension", he said.
Kandasamy believes that it would take a long time for the condition of children to improve on the estates. "Governments and estate managements move slowly in this regard. Very few estates, other than the ones run by the top business houses, spend on social welfare like housing, education and health", she said.
Kandasamy, coordinator at the Institute of Social Development based in Kandy, said that after the two girls died in Colombo, the institute has been trying to raise awareness among children and women about their rights. "We try to get details of their workplace, hold literacy classes and generally raise their level of knowledge and rights awareness", she said.
Asked if she would recommend banning the employment of young girls as domestic workers to protect them from exploitation, she explains that poor families are critically dependent on the contribution of every member. "What is required is to find ways to ensure the rights of all workers and children are safeguarded."
[Abridged from TamilNet: