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• Bangladesh aims to close clay kilns to cut pollution
• Risky work and poor pay for migrant labourers
• Workers need new jobs if transition is to be just

DHAKA - It's back-breaking work - dusty, dangerous and poorly paid - but the million Bangladeshis who make, bake and stack clay bricks fear their jobs will soon go in the name of saving the planet.

And they don't expect that any 'green' change forced upon them will be easy to weather, fearing they will be sent back to their far-flung fields to eke out a thin living.

"It's hard, back-breaking work and the pay is not great - but we are poor people and we need this income," said Mansur Miya, a 35-year-old who has worked in the kilns for eight years.

Bangladesh is home to more than 8,000 brick kilns - sprawling sites that are staffed by migrants during the dry season, which runs from December to June.

The World Bank estimates the workforce at : men, women and children - some as young as 10 - who come from across the country to mold clay, then bake and stack the bricks.

Many now fear their brick-making days are numbered as the Bangladesh government plans to close many of the sites in the next few years in a bid to reduce air pollution.

"We have been coming to these kilns during the dry season to earn some extra cash because life is not easy as farm workers back home," said Nasima, a 35-year-old brickworker, who only provided her first name for anonymity.

Making clay pollutes the air and uses topsoil that is vital for agriculture, so the government is actively pushing alternatives such as concrete blocks.

It plans to lacking legal approval in the near future, under a phase-out of all clay brick production.

Syeda Rizwana Hasan, who heads the government's ministry of environment, forests and climate change, denied that closing the kilns would be a serious jolt to its low-earning workers.

They can go back to the farming they anyhow do in the off-season or some might even enter the new concrete market, she told Context.

"It will not be an unjust transition," Hasan said.

But workers said while the pay and working conditions at the brick kilns were exploitative, they still need the extra cash.

Moogdho Mahzab, an economist at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said the brickworkers risk being swept aside under the reform initiative.

"As the government and development organisations promote better technology and techniques in the sector, there has to be some kind of support system for the workers," he said.

Bonded, landless, abused

Brick work is not easy.

Every year, Bangladeshis of all ages descend from the climate-ravaged south and poor pockets of the north to become bonded workers for contractors who are engaged by kiln owners.

Abdur Rouf, who runs a brick kiln in the outskirts of Narayanganj, central Bangladesh, said owners pay advances to the contractors, who in turn issue loans to the workers on condition they labour right through the dry season and pay it back.

The work day can stretch from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Nasima is a bonded worker who came from Mymensingh, north of the capital, to work in a Baktabali kiln a few years ago along with her husband, a landless peasant, and 10-year-old son Ramzan.

The couple's two adolescent daughters stayed home, waiting to be married off as their parents cannot afford schooling.

Nasima gets 400 taka ($3.30) for every 1,000 bricks she moves with her bare hands - not much for a hard day's work.

There is no trade union to bargain for the workers and pay is decided by the kiln owners' association, said Mohammad Dulal, a 55-year-old labourer from the southern district of Barguna.

Since workers are taken on by contractors and given high-interest loans, or 'dadon', they cannot claim the minimum wage - let alone expect any pension or retirement benefits, Dulal said.

"Some of the owners are good with us - but we don't get much attention from the government," he said.

Many workers suffer serious respiratory problems as coal burning emits , with little in the way of protective equipment in use, according to a 2017 study in the Journal of Public Health and Epidemiology.

Inspectors also make scant effort to monitor the brick fields that sprawl across the city outskirts and rural outposts, with routinely reported in local media.

Every year, police launch sporadic drives to rescue tens of workers who are shackled or kept without pay in brick kilns.

The sectoral reforms initiated by government and development organisations have mostly focused on technological upgrades to cut pollution and reduce energy use - not to protect workers.

Switching from clay to concrete may create permanent jobs with better safety standards and more automation - but the number of jobs may be fewer, said Shafiqul Alam, energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

"While cleaner kilns and block factories could offer decent, high-quality jobs to a section of the workers - the rest should get the training and support to move to other sectors," said Alam.

($1 = 121.1000 taka)

(Reporting by Md. Tahmid Zami; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths and Jack Graham)