When the entire country will celebrate `Childrens’ Day on birth anniversary of first prime minister of the country, Pandit Jawahar lal Nehru, on Saturday, millions of children across the country were still deprived of their constitutional rights.
During the age when children play and go to schools, these children are forced by their families to work as `child labour’ in order to have two times meal. Studies shows that despite of government’s and non-government organizations pro-active measures and existing laws to tackle this problem, India still possesses the largest child labour force in the world. Considering the magnitude and extent of the problem and that it essentially a socio-economic problem inextricably linked to poverty and illiteracy, it required concerted efforts from all sections of the society to make a dent into the problem.
Children are the greatest gift to humanity and childhood is an important and impressionable stage of human development as it holds the potential to the future development of any society. However, it is curse on the society that even after passing of more than 68-years of Independence, child labour still remained a big problem for the entire nation. A recent study on child labour problem carried out in Amroha district on direction of State Information Commissioner, Hafiz Usman, pointed that how the children in large number were still working as domestic help, labourer etc as they could not have two times meal without it. The survey indicates that the child labour has not been reduced to any significant degree, on the contrary, it has now become an increasingly serious social problem in urgent need of redress.
The high drop-out rates in schools create a continual supply of potential child labour, and one which is being exploited by employers seeking to cut labour costs and recruit a more compliant and flexible work force. The survey also showed alarming trend that the so-called `compulsory education’ is in practice not free. Tuition and miscellaneous fees collected from parents have become the burden in the way of their education and causing child labour.
Giving detail of the survey, Usman told `The Pioneer’ here on Friday afternoon that the Department of social work in Teerthanker Mahaveer University, carried out door to door research in 48 targeted areas of three thesils of Amroha distrct. It pointed that even in this small town of Uttar Pradesh and that just in 48 wards, 5514 child workers were identified which included 2789 working in various industries. He said that what is alarming that the above figure included 1106 girls as child labours which showed that even special efforts to make girl child also educated fails to bring desire goal. Surprisingly, 568 of the labourers were also found to be literate which pointed that despite of being education, poverty had forced them to go for work instead of concertating on their studies. The study showed existence of labourers in all the majors sectors like in handicrafts, beedi and sigar making, tailoring, domestic work, agriculture and others, he pointed.
Usman further said that the survey team after interacting with all the agencies concerned concluded that if government policies remained unchanged, there seems little chance that the growing problems of child labour in India can be checked, let alone resolved, in the near future. Besides the on-going measures and existing laws, some important points suggested to address the problem included control on population growth to eliminate poverty which is basic cause of child labour issues, mandatory on industrialists for equal pay without discrimination as the age, status, religions etc, adequate health and educational services, need to provide training and education to the parents of child workers during their free time, to create the opportunity of adult employment to reduce child work force.