Children forced to work for 20p a day in horrific unregulated cloth workshops of Bangladesh to produce clothes for the West

These are the photographs that show the grim reality for thousands of children in Bangladesh who are forced to work long crippling hours stitching labels into clothes. While the factories mainly make clothes for the local and Indian market, they also supply well-known and established international brands through subcontracts, which making it difficult for companies to know exactly where all their clothes are coming from.

Photographer Claudio Montesano Casillas has revealed both the shocking lack of safety controls inside some of Bangladesh's unregulated clothes factories as well as the grueling routines of the children that work there

Casillas visited the factories at first by accident as part of an 'Old Dhaka' tour, but was fascinated by the conditions. An informal factory could comprise of a room with 15 sewing machines and are often without emergency exits, fire safety plans or extinguishers as they are not subjected to the nation wide fire and buildings safety assessments. 

The children, who don't have time to go to school, are tasked with a huge range of jobs from embroidery and sticking on sequins to dyeing fabric and machine cleaning.

He said: 'Inside these factories garment workers work six to six and a half days per week from dawn till far after dusk for a minimum wage. The workers from these factories sleep inside or rent rooms next to these factories. 

'They come from villages to cities seeking for employment and dreaming of a better life,' he said.

It is thought there are about a million children aged 10 to 14 working as child labourers in Bangladesh, according to UNICEF - but the number is far higher when the age band is expanded.

The garment industry is the lifeline of Bangladesh's economy, earning $25 billion in exports each year and employing 4 million workers, mainly women.