Over three million children in Bangladesh are trapped in child labour and among them 1.3 million are made to work extremely hard in hazardous conditions, according to a report.

One in five children do not complete primary school in the country, while one in every two girl child is made to marry, a  survey jointly conducted in all the 64 districts of the country by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and UNICEF.

Nearly half of children don’t have birth registration, and over one lakh kids are in institutional care and lack family support.

In order to tackle child protection related issues in the country, the Government of Bangladesh announced that it will triple the number of social workers from 3,000 to 9,000.

The government’s commitment came up after the National Household Survey revealed that 45 million children, constituting 89 percent of the total, are regularly subjected to physical and psychological violence at home.

UNICEF country representative in Bangladesh Sheldon Yett congratulated the government for the dramatic increase in the number of social workers to help benefit from critical professional care.

Inaugurating the event symposium on ‘Child Protection in Bangladesh’, Prime minister Sheikh Hasina said the government aims to build a professional social service workforce to enhance efficient delivery of child protection services such as helpline 1098, child protection allowance and community based outreach services.

Head of the EU delegation to Bangladesh, Ambassador Charles Whiteley said the EU remains committed to supporting the government to strengthen child protection systems in the South Asian nation.