Stock Photo - Bangladeshi child laborers handle pieces of old tyres to be recycled in Dhaka. The recycling industry in the Bangladeshi capital plays an important role as it struggles to curb waste in the city's population which has grown more than two and half times to 17 million people in the last two decades. A 2002/03 survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics found that approximately 4. 9 million children worked as child labourers in Bangladesh, 14. 2 per cent of the total 35. 06 million children in the age group of 5-14 years. Bangladesh is one of the poorest nations on the planet with 40 percent of its 144 million people living on less than 1 dollar a day.