Street children in Calcutta have little choice but to lift heavy bags of cement from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day to earn the Irish equivalent of £1, according to Maureen Forrest, of the Edith Wilkins Hope Foundation.
"These children are lifting 50kg bags of cement every day of the year. I have seen 10year-old children who are like old people. Their lungs are destroyed because of the constant inhalation of dust," she said.
Ms Forrest is director of the Cork-based Hope Foundation, set up in 1999. She has just returned from a trip to India and says there is light at the end of the tunnel for Calcutta's 200,000 street children.
"Traditionally the highly educated caste group had nothing to do with street children. However, that is changing, which can only be a positive thing. The Indian government is also starting to recognise the problems the city is facing."
Calcutta is about the size of Dublin but has a growing population of more than 14 million. The city's street children typically come from extremely poor families and often have run away from home to escape physical and emotional abuse.
They live anywhere they can: on the streets, railway platforms, under bridges and even inside sewerage pipes.
Street children are often found begging, or else picking through huge piles of garbage looking for things that will have value in the recycling market. Many are drawn into the world of child prostitution and are exposed to constant hardship.
The Hope Foundation's Overseas Director, Edith Wilkins, has spent the last 12 years working with the children on the streets of Calcutta. Ms Wilkins has an adopted family of more than 20 foster children.
The foundation focuses on rehabilitating, counselling and educating the street children.
The charity also works to provide relief for people who were devastated by an earthquake in the country last January.
Ms Forrest recently visited the Rann of Kutch area, where she was deeply upset by the lack of medical care available for its inhabitants. "I saw one child who had gone blind because of a deficiency of vitamin A," she said.
Another girl had a sore on her foot which was developing into gangrene because it had not been bandaged.
Ms Forrest said the foundation is currently recruiting eight Irish-based doctors and nurses to travel to India for a period of one month.
For further information contact the organisation at 1 Clover Lawn, Skehard Road, Cork, or at 021-4292990.