A national level workshop on elimination of bonded labour will be held here on January 12. A preparatory meeting for it was held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary AP Padhi here on Monday wherein Secretary Panchayati Raj Deo Ranjan Kumar Singh presented the schedule for discussion.
It was decided to hold the one-day workshop at the State Institute of Rural Development. The Chief Secretary advised to involve the civil society organizations working in the area of bonded labor and the field level officers who are actually handling the situation at ground level. Padhi also asked the department to make the workshop focused and outcome oriented.
Further, the meeting decided to involve office bearers of the brick kiln, stone crushing and other related sectors employees associations for getting first hand feed-back from them. The subject experts and research scholars would be invited to have academic and administrative interaction for elimination of the menace. Open house discussions would be held on the issues raised by District Magistrates, Superintendents of Police, Sub-Divisional Magistrates and labour Officers regarding identification and rehabilitation of the bonded labor.
AK Parasar, Joint Registrar, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), present in the meeting, said similar workshops are being organised in other States. The ultimate objective of the exercise is to gather realistic inputs for development of an effective rehabilitation policy at national level aimed at elimination of bonded labor.
The dignitaries from the NHRC slated to address include Justice D Murugesan, Member, Satya Narayan Mohanty, Secretary General, Dr Ranjit Singh, Joint Secretary, and Damodar Sarangi, Special Rapporteur.
The Collectors, Superintendents of Police, Sub-Collectors and Dist labour Officers of Balangir, Bargarh, Gajapati, Kalahandi, Nayagarh, Nuapada, Puri, Subarnapur and Sundargarh have also been asked to participate in the workshop. Besides, the chairpersons of the Panchayat Samitis of Sundargarh, Balangir and Nuapada districts will also participate.