The furnace of broken dreams

• Photographer
  Raffaele Petralla
• Prizes
  Bronze in Editorial/Environmental

The furnace of broken dreams On the outskirts of Dhaka there are about 1,000 brick factories. 90% of them are considered illegal by the Bangladesh government because the stacks are too low and also for the use of coal as fuel. The toxic fumes they emit are the cause of 40% of the pollution in the city of Dhaka. Next to each factory there are the villages of workers.They are recruited from small villages where poverty, unemployment and illiteracy are rampant. They receive the promise of a decent housing and a wage that allows them to be able to sustain each other even in the months when the factories are closed. When they arrive the place is quite the opposite: whole families are forced to work for 15 hours a day without any right and with a salary that allows them only to survive miserably. The days go on, equal to each other, between the fine dust and the heat of hell. Each of their dream seems to be broken.