AYAAN QAYOOM
Childhood is considered to be the golden period of one’s life but this doesn’t hold true for some children who struggle to make their both ends meet during their childhood years. One in 10 children is laboring in the global economy today. Often forfeiting the chance to ever begin school, these children have the highest illiteracy rates in the world. Victims are five to 17 years of age, and nearly half of them, 72 million, are in hazardous work. Slavery, human trafficking, prostitution, and activities that directly harm the physical, mental, and moral well-being of a child are considered “Worst Forms of Child Labor.”
Child labour means employment of children in any kind of work that hampers their physical and mental development, deprives them of their basic educational and recreational requirements. Children are employed in hazardous work such as bidi rolling, cracker industry, pencil, matchbox and bangle making industries etc. The young and immature minds of the children find it difficult to cope with such situations leading to emotional and physical problems.
Employers also prefer child labourers because they can extract more work and have to pay lesser amount. Based on my personal observation, as i belong from Chenab valley, i have witnessed that mostly there has become a practice to utilise small children in the household things without considering their age. Citing a scene, once i was attended as guest in a family at Jammu, it was chilly winter’s morning, near around 5’O clock of morning, a kid of 11yrs was cleaning the lobby with cold water and it brings a pinch in my heart, when I discussed this issue with one of the member of that family, they revert, these kids are meant for work whereas ours are from elite strata. Anyway this is usual we are seeing around.
The Government has an important role to play in this fight against child labour. As poverty is one of the major causes of child labour, the government needs to assure that it provides basic amenities to all its citizens. It needs to generate sufficient jobs to assure employability to the poor. The parents as well as the children should be made aware of the government’s initiative to provide free education to all the children between the age group of 6-14 years. Children are the future citizen of a country. A nation full of poverty ridden illiterate children cannot make progress. The need of the hour is to expand the machinery for enforcing the various laws on child labour, if child labour is to be eradicated from India especially from our region.
The amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, passed by Parliament recently, demonstrate a lack of national commitment to abolishing all forms of child labour. Instead of attempting an overhaul of legislation that has proved ineffective in curbing the phenomenon, Parliament has allowed children up to the age of 14 to be employed in ‘family enterprises’, and created a new category of ‘adolescents’ (the 14-18 age group) who can be employed in ‘non-hazardous’ occupations. In the name of acknowledging the socio-economic realities of India, the amendments tweak the law in such a way that children are in some form or other available for employment. The only concession to their educational rights is that they are permitted to work in family enterprises only outside school hours and during vacations. Curiously, the main amendment — to ban children up to the age of 14 in any occupation — is being touted as a progressive leap from the earlier ban limited to some occupations and processes. It should not be forgotten that with the passage of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, a statutory obligation to ensure that every child completes elementary education, is already in place. The exemption to family enterprises effectively retains conditions under which children are made to contribute economically while studying. Working outside of school hours and earning valuable income for the family will surely have a deleterious effect on the children’s health as well as their aptitude for learning. Regulation is going to be a big challenge, as it will be difficult to determine whether a particular family is running an enterprise, or whether some faceless owner has employed a single family to circumvent the law. The fallout will be a higher dropout rate. They may go to school for some years, concurrently work with their families, and graduate to being full-time adolescent workers, without completing elementary education. The NDA government, like its predecessor that proposed the amendments, seems to be satisfied with mere compliance with International Labour Organisation Conventions 138 and 182. The former mandates compulsory schooling till the age of 15, but permits countries with inadequate education facilities to reduce it to 14, while Convention 182 prohibits employment of children “in the worst forms of labour”. Bare compliance with international norms is not enough. Children from the poor and marginalised sections, especially Dalits, are still in danger of being deprived of both the joys of childhood and their constitutional right to education. It is yet another stark reminder that the country is far from achieving the complete elimination of child labour.
In Conclusion, Child labor not only impacts one generation, but every one that follows. Not all work performed by children is child labor. Household chores, contributing to a family business, or having an afterschool job can be beneficial and necessary. However, any work that compromises a child’s health, personal development, or schooling is considered child labor. |
