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| Kathua town earns dubious distinction | | Child labour rampant in town | | Early Times Report
KATHUA, Oct 8: The Kathua town is earning a dubious distinction of being hotbed of child labour as scores of children can be seen working at motor service stations, shops, cleaning dishes, carrying lamps on shoulders for lighting in marriages and are found working at various factories under unavoidable circumstances.
Sources informed Early Times that presently Labour contractors and large landowners continue to employ children, often exposing them to vulnerable situations and earning huge profit by sheer exploitation of these hapless children.
"Extreme poverty fuels the practice of child labour, whereas the Labour Department always turned a Nelson eye towards the menace by giving lame excuses", they said, adding that the callous working of Labour department could be well gauged from the fact that the department has registered only few cases of child labour while only 13 cases were under trial.
"These hapless children would not get education as the authorities responsible for liberating them have failed to count exact number of children working across Kathua town", said advocate Sushil Gupta, adding that there were several constitutional and other statutory provisions aimed at tackling child labour.
"The Child Labour (Protection and Rehabilitation) Act, 1986 was introduced by the Union government to ban employment of children below the age of 14 years in factories, mines and hazardous establishments and to regulate the working conditions of children in other sectors, where there was no prohibition of employment of children, but same has not properly implemented in district Kathua", he said.
He further said that lackadaisical attitude of administration, concerned department and other responsible agencies has increased the demand for cheap labour, and correspondingly, the number of child labourers in various establishes has increased.
"A multi-pronged approach is needed for addressing the issue. Strengthening the implementation of the child nutrition schemes like ICDS; making enough arrangements for the education of the children under the recently enacted Right to Education legislation; and stricter implementation of the child labour prohibition law can also eradicate the menace", he said.
Assistant Labour Commissioner Ghanshyam said that there was no plan regarding the rehabilitation of child labour at district level.
"Besides our inspectors are regularly carrying out inspections in their respective areas", he said, adding that one side of the coin was that in two-third of the cases, the child was sent to work by parents against child's will.
"The main reason for this is that the poverty of people forces them to fall into the shrewd design of promoting child labour unwittingly. On the other hand not only the government but the department and administration is very much concerned about this malpractice", he said.
"Recently a district level committee has been constituted to put a curb on menace. Moreover, according to law, every citizen could complaint against the child labour practice to our department or in the court," he said. |
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