Child Labour

इनके बचपन में जो ना रंग भर सको ना सही, पर इनके बचपन को छीनने का हक भी तुम्हें नहीं.

Have you ever been to a tea shop, dhaba or small shop and saw any child working?

As per the Child and Adolescent Labour Act 1986 , amended in 2016 (“CLPR Act”), a “Child” is defined as any person below the age of 14, and the CLPR Act prohibits employment of a Child in any employment including as a domestic help. It is a cognizable criminal offence to employ a Child for any work. Children between age of 14 and 18 are defined as “Adolescent” and the law allows Adolescent to be employed except in the listed hazardous occupation and processes which include mining, inflammable substance and explosives related work and any other hazardous process as per the Factories Act, 1948. In 2001, an estimated 1% of all child workers, or about 120,000 children in India were in a hazardous job.

It refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and interferes with a child’s ability to attend and participate in school fully by obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.

Asia and the Pacific still has the largest numbers of child labourers (almost 78 million or 9.3% of child population)

India ranks 116 among 172 countries with highest number of stunted children and child labour. According to the 2011 census, the total child population in India in the age group (5-14) years is 259.6 million out of which 10.1 million  are working, either as ‘main worker’ or as ‘marginal worker’ around 5.6 million are boys and 4.5 million are girls. Which becomes one of the biggest problem of our nation. But when we compare this with the 2001 census  the incidence of child labour has decreased in India by 2.6 million between 2001 and 2011. But this numbers are majorly decreased in Rural areas, while the number of child workers has increased in urban areas.

Major sectors where Child Labour can be found majorly are–

States with High incidence of child labour–

Inorder to fight with this situation and completely stop Child Labour in India. On july 19, 2016  the Indian Upper House (Rajya Sabha) approved a new amendment. After all the injustice faced by millions of children in India a new law was approved.

This new law prohibits all employment of children under 14 years. Thus this law totally fit with the Education Act of 2009, giving the right to free education to all children up to this age and makes it compulsory for the parents to send their children to the school. As per the old Child Labour Act of 1986 children from 14 to 18 years were allowed to do any kind of work but after implementation of this new Law children are prohibited chi to work in hazardous work places for examples working in mines or working with inflammable substances or explosives.

Also the penalties for employers have been increased when child labour is encountered. There is an imprisonment of at least six months to two years (previously three months to one year) and/or a fine of between 20,000 and 50,000 rupees (previously 10,000 to 20,000 rupees). For a second offense an imprisonment of 1 to 3 years can be imposed.

The primary causes of Child Labour in India is Poverty. India have around 73 million people living in extreme poverty which is about 5.5% of our total population. Children work because their survival and that of their families depend on it. Due to poverty, parents cannot afford the studies of their children and make them earn their wages from a tender age. In fact, they are well aware of the grief of losing their loved ones to poverty many times. They send their small children to work in factories, homes, and shops. They are made to work to increase the income of their poor families at the earliest. These decisions are taken only for the purpose of eking out a living for their family. But such decisions shatter children’s physical and mental state as they lose their childhood at an early age.

We have various law to protect them but we are failing, we have various regulatory departments but we are still ineffective. We have to change our attitude towards Child labour and we have to start focusing upon Child Development. Various organisations who forces children to work needs to realise that children belongs to the school not to the factories those hand are not meant for working. We have to Save them and save our future Generation.

Child labour and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labour of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labour to the end of time. We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us. – Grace Abbott

#ChildLabour #Government #India #world