ISEAL member GoodWeave has prevented thousands of children losing their youth and health in the small carpet factories of India. Its concern with healthcare has recently brought it into contact with the industrial factories of Panipat.
The steady tak tak tak of the looms continues the entire working day. Motes of dust and lint rise and fall in clouds unable to escape the airless room. Strip lighting doesn’t focus the light on detailed work but picks out the close profiles of workers. They have to stand all day or sit all day finishing the carpets.
This is a typical rug factory in India. Rug production is focused mainly in two areas – the traditional carpet weaving belt around Varanasi and Mirzapur where families and small factories are filled with looms, and the more industrialised production in a town called Panipat, about an hour’s drive north of Delhi.
For a long time the ending of child labour in carpet making has been at the forefront of GoodWeave’s concerns in India and Nepal. At the beginning of this year GoodWeave successfully piloted a new health programme for factory workers at two carpet-weaving factories in Panipat.
By educating and highlighting the health risks involved in carpet-weaving - such as inhalation of fibre dust - the initiative sets out to encourage workers to take more responsibility for their own health, be aware of potential symptoms and to use the protective equipment supplied, in order to avoid potential illnesses.
Four interactive training sessions were run for 110 workers. At the same time two health camps registered and examined 148 workers and advised individuals on any symptoms or apparent illnesses.
Some factories have their own dispensary but the smaller facilities in this study could not afford that. The employer was keen and cooperative and considered it a good direction to go in although margins prevented him from helping.
The feedback from both factories was extremely positive, with workers expressing a desire to extend the programme to their families and to provide similar education on the hazards of tobacco and advice on healthy nutrition. Although the employer couldn’t afford a dispensary like larger factories he was keen to cooperate and encouraged further visits. GoodWeave’s Indian office is now working on a plan to roll out the programme to many more factories in the area.
Case Studies
Geeta (34) has worked as a yarn opener in her local town of Panipat for seven years. “I think the health camp” she says “was a good effort to improve our health and make us more conscious of our well-being.” Married and with three children she would like to see them benefit from the health camps as well.
The village of Ujha is just outside Panipat and home to Om Prakash (28), his wife and six month old son. A clipping helper he finds “medical care is expensive, we’re not easily able to afford it and so these health camps make us aware of problems that we may not know we have.”