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| Child labour rampant in Kathua | | |
ARUN TRISAL
Kathua, June 14: How many of us ever care at the sight and on the plight of child labourers. It is a heart rending scene to see tender aged young blossoming kids working in a car, scooter workshops, on roadsides in Kathua.
Many of these kids are not even elevens years old, their tender hands which should be holding pens & notebooks in their hands are bruised by working with heavy spanners and screw drivers. Their clothes and face are coloured with grease, engine oil & smoke particles meshed on their bodies. They are forced to work for more than ten hours in summer heat of the summer and shivering cooled of winter in the open-air workshops and small scale factories.
Just for a salary of Rs 60 per day they are forced to work like animals in most inhuman conditions for long odd hours without any rest or relief. The long exposure to cocktail of the gases and fumes from the work places makes these children vulnerable to lethal diseases including nervous disability, asthma, tuberculosis and nervous disorder. Similarly the children working in tyre rethreading factories are expose to obnoxious fumes like SO2, HCL gas and CFC and dioxins most of these gases are highly toxic and extremely dangerous to the health of young children and who are without any protection mask provided to them by owners of their workshop.
The Labour welfare officers are least bothered about the violation of bundle of laws to protect the young children from hazardous occupation and exploitation at the hands of contractors and the workshop/factory owners. The social welfare department of the J&K Govt is apparently too busy looking the other way round and has virtually dumped the order of the Supreme Court regarding the rehabilitation of children engaged in any hazardous work.
The Supreme Court has clearly laid down that it is the responsibility of every State Govt to protect the rights of the children working in moter workshops, factories, and construction sites and even in Dhabas and rehabilitate them by creating a fund of Rs 20,000 in the name of each child out of which 50% was to be deposited by the employer and the rest 50% was to be by the Govt. Till date not a single child has been identified and rehabilitated by the state Govt nor a single employer has been fined or punished by the concerned authorities. While terrorism remains a major issue for the Govt but what about the state apathy towards these budding kids who have lost their childhood on the alter of liberalization, privatization and so called development.
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