Children residing in worst affected areas of Jharkhand due to mining are devoid of basic needs like education, water and food. A recent project report titled ‘Protecting Child Rights in Mining Affected Areas’ prepared by a group of NGO members after paying a field visit to Katras, Ghatsila, Jadugoda, Musabani and Chaibasa shows the prevalence of these problems.
According to the report, students are not taught in their mother tongue, mid day meals are not served regularly, the water is impure and there is no toilet in the school for boys and girls.
“We were shocked to see that industries established in these areas have provided hand pumps in the name of CSR activity but the water coming out from these pumps is either impure or unavailable. Constant mining of coal and asbestos leading to high content of air and soil pollution has resulted to this unavailability of pure drinking water,” HAQ Centre for Child Rights representative Anisha Ghosh said.
Samanta, a member of NGO, who accompanied Bose in this research work said, “The affect of mining has caused complications in delivery of babies at Katras. Handicapped babies are born. The water if used for drinking or bath causes skin diseases. In Ghatsila, the Anganwadi serving crèche to these children is often closed on working days. In Jadugoda children aged between zero to six years are not taught in their mother tongue which is must as per RTE norms.”
The members along with NGOs like Save the Children and Plan India were sharing this information at the Agenda of the State Round Table meeting on ‘Children and Mining-Protecting Child Rights in Mining Affected Areas’.
“Most of the school children in these mining areas are given low quality rice instead of proper mid day meal,” pointed out HAQ Centre for Child Rights Programme Officer Kumar Shailabh.
The report clearly recommends setting up of government monitoring agency at every mining zone so that the rights of children are ensured.
Similar survey was done in states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha. “We found that the problems of children in mining areas are usually overlooked by the Government authorities,” Ghosh said while connecting the poor condition of mining area children of the states covered in their survey.