RUGMARK:
carpets made without child labour

If you want to buy a handmade carpet from India, look for the RUGMARK label.

What is RUGMARK?

The Rugmark Foundation recruits carpet producers and importers who make and sell carpets that are free from child labour. Rugmark encourages the carpet producers to employ adults instead of children, and to pay them the legal minimum wage.

In 1989 420,000 children worked at making carpets in India. Many of them still do this. Some of these children are working for parents or relatives, but others are bonded workers (basically slaves) sold to the carpet makers by desperately poor parents. The children may work in factories (big or small), or for people who have just one or two looms. Wherever they work, the conditions are often terrible: see Kumar's story, for example.

The Rugmark Foundation was started in 1995 to try to rescue these children and to prevent other children from working in carpet factories. It was the result of many different groups of people working together: consumers, carpet manufacturers, campaigners for children's rights, and international organizations like UNICEF.

FOUNDATION: an organization that gives money to a charity

LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE: the lowest amount of money that the law says a person must be paid for their work.

BONDED WORKER: someone who is sold to another person in order to work for that person. They can only become free if they buy their freedom

CONSUMERS: the people who buy or use something

Kumar's Story

How does Rugmark work?

Licences are given to carpet manufacturers and exporters who agree that:

• they will not employ children under 14 years old
• that they will pay the minimum wage to the adults who work for them
• that they will allow surprise inspections of their factories by Rugmark inspectors

Every carpet has its own certificate, label and number. This information means that it is possible to know exactly where a carpet was made - not only which factory made it, but even which loom (machine) was used to make it. In the first two and a half years, Rugmark gave licences to 144 exporters, and certified 466,317 carpets. Most of these carpets went to Germany, the world's biggest importer of oriental carpets.

The inspections are very important in making sure that the Rugmark system works. There are about 18,000 looms which make Rugmark carpets, and 10% of these looms are inspected every month. The factories do not know when they will be inspected - in fact, the inspectors themselves only find out which factories they will check on the day of the inspection.

Since they began inspecting factories, the inspectors have found 942 children working illegally. If the factory owners do not stop employing children immediately, they lose their Rugmark licence. The inspection system is paid for by the carpet exporters, who pay 0.25% of the value of their carpets to Rugmark to cover the cost of the inspections.

LICENCE: an official document that gives you permission to do something

INSPECT (v): to check something to see if it meets the necessary standards;
INSPECTOR: the person who inspects;
INSPECTION (n): when something is inspected
SURPRISE INSPECTIONS are inspections that happen without warning.

What about the children?

It is very important that the children who are rescued from the carpet factories have help to start a new life, and that other children, who would be in danger of working in the factories, never start. The carpet importers pay 1% of the value of the carpets they import to a fund that is administered by UNICEF. This fund is used to provide a school and a rehabilitation centre for the child workers.

The Rugmark primary school was opened in August 1996, at Jagapur in one of the main carpet-making regions of India. 250 children go to the school, which gives them free uniforms, books, pencils, paper and a free meal. Many of these children are the sons and daughters of carpet makers and, if there was no Rugmark school, they would probably work in the carpet factories too.

The Balashraya shelter was also started in 1996, to help rehabilitate children who have been freed from carpet factories. It can care for 75 - 100 children. In addition to basic education, the children here learn about things like health, social issues and the law; they are encouraged to develop qualities of discipline and leadership, and to be concerned about protecting people's rights.

FUND (n) Money that is collected for a special purpose)

SHELTER: a place of protection

REHABILITATE: to help someone who has suffered to lead a normal life again
REHABILITATION CENTRE: a place where people go so that they can be rehabilitated

DISCIPLINE: being strong and self-controlled

And the Future?

Rugmark has been successful in helping children, but there is still a lot to be done, and it needs to expand. One problem is that if factory owners do not want to stop using child labour, they just move away from the areas where Rugmark is active into other areas where people are very poor. This happened to 13 year-old Ansari:

"Since I was seven years of age I have been working on the loom owned by my uncle. Then his manufacturer (the man for whom he made the carpets) asked him to move the loom to a safer place where there were no raids or surprise checks by child rights activists. I am paid 1,000 rupees ($28) for one carpet, which normally takes 3 to 4 months to make and I have to work 12 to 16 hours a day to do that."

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Updated Information

The article from which this information comes was written in 1997.
The RUGMARK Foundation has now grown, and there are Rugmark Foundations in Nepal and Pakistan.

For updated information, you can visit these RUGMARK websites:

The International Site of RUGMARK: http://www.rugmark.de/english/e_home.htm

RUGMARK Foundation USA: http://www.RUGMARK.org/