Good evening friends
My both books getting translation in to English, the translator provided me
a sample that iam sharing with you this essay on the issue of domestic child
labour in Hyderabad and Secunderabad twin cities, i am happy to hear your
comments
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* *
*Employment of Children as Domestic and Hotel Workers is banned*
* *
With the kind of work enforced as child labour within
households, hotels, *Dhabas,* restaurants etc., the Govt. of India through
Ministry of Labour and Employment, has banned the employment of young
children in these places recognizing them as hazardous occupations. Terming
them as hazardous in addition to other specified occupations, and included
these hazardous places in the *Part A *of the Child Labour (Prohibition &
Regulation) Act 1986, making it effective from 10th October 2006. The
gesture hopefully rekindles the 1986 Act though taken belatedly after 20
long years. But to brighten the hope the Government has to initiate measures
and start work to implement the same.
If we look back… to relieve the burden of our country’s laboring children
right from the Day of our Independence to the very day of conceiving
the 1986 Act, for 40 long years, we have not done anything either to
formulate or to enact a Law to ban the child labour. Whatever we had was a
respite… a hope on paper… that guarantees a universal and free education
given in the Constitution. The Act of 1986 divided the nature of
child-labour work places as hazardous and non- hazardous. It concluded that
the hazardous ones exist very fewer in number, there by permitting 90 % of
the work places to engage and employ young children as laborers. This has
resulted in the continuous employment/ enforcement of child labour in both
the banned and hazardous and non-hazardous occupations and work places
entirely to the extent of cent percent.
Children with Chores… Sweating in Hotels & Households:
All in the entire Child labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986,
sans the recent Amendment was of little use to the ever burdened laboring
children in India. Since India has failed in its expressed objective not
only in the prohibition of child labour but also in its regulation as well.
This has led towards the budding of various NGO community initiatives all
towards a live Movement against the blight of child labour. The likes of
NDWM (National Domestic Workers’ Movement) - a Non-Governmental Organization
(NGO) took up action, all in alliance with domestic workers, child domestic
workers and migrant workers only to build pressure on the Government and the
Labour Ministry all for a better legislation against the rampant practice of
child labour in India.
The cumulative campaigning and advocacy efforts of the NGO
community, together with the all-round efforts of domestic, child domestic
and migrant workers as a consequence of which the Union Ministry of Labour
and Employment, GOI has finally yielded. In the Schedule to the Child Labour
(Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, (61 of 1986), in Part A, under the
heading "Occupations," the GOI has proposed Amendments and effected the
same.
After item (13) and the entry relating thereto, the following items and
entries were added, namely:--
"(14) Employment of child as domestic workers or servants;
(15) Employment of children in *Dhabas* (road-side eateries), restaurants,
hotels, motels, tea-shops, resorts, spas or other recreational centers".
The employment of young children by the employers violates all the
Amendments incorporated lately in the Child Labour (Prohibition and
Regulation) 1986 Act. Yet Although such a violation in fact attracts
conviction for a term not less than 6 months in jail altogether with the
imposition of penalty up to Rs. 25,000; yet, to this day, no offender
culprit was ever subjected to such a conviction. While in cases of torture
and prison violence resorted to by the employers on their subject children,
where, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) 1986 Act cannot be
applied, the Police are merely registering IPC 324 and 506 (inflicting
injury with a criminal intent) since both the IPC sections are bailable the
culprits are going scot-free.
Among the Children engaged in the domestic work, almost 90% of them are
girls and are compelled to work for 14 to 16 hours even without a break. And
the nature of their work range from sweeping the floors; washing the cloths;
cleaning the dishes; mopping the floors and cutting and slitting the
vegetables. And their day starts from 4 Am early in the morning and
concludes at 11 Pm in the Night at the time when their employers go to bed.
And it very common the children time and again get a get a severe thrashing
in the way an animal is normally subjected to. This is when if anything goes
wrong even while the children are engaged in their work. And the thrashing
goes with whatever the thing their hands could lay upon only to suffer
painful skin rashes. More over the children has to cope up with the wild
gestures and sexual abuse and harassment at the hands of their employers
whether male or female. Normally the age of victim girl child is between 8
and 16.
Recent estimates put the ilk of such employers in Hyderabad could be around
a hefty 40,000 in number. You take any apartment in the city; each of such
apartment complexes could produce around 10 to20 child labourers and are not
visible to outside world. And when the employers go out to their offices or
to their respective places, these child labourers have no chance of seeing
either the sun rise or the sun set. And most of these children are hailing
from drought affected rural areas and from the families that are subjected
to severe oppression and exploitation only to be exported to the urban and
metro areas by some of the worst gangs indulged in human trafficking for the
purpose of for whom holding these toiling children to supply city apartments
as slave or cheap labour becomes a business to cater market. These cannibals
are targeting the girl children hailing from the poorest of the poor
families coming from drought prone rural areas. Through promising the
parents good money and their children excellent food clothing, shelter the
ultra-urban suckers bamboozle the unsuspecting innocent parents and their
children only to turn them into apartment slavery and into meek silence in
the urban and metro hustle bustle. Only to go time and again, either
‘missing’ or else become victims tolerating time and again the cooked up
false charges of theft along with torture, rape, sexual harassment even
murder by lynching all for the reason of statelessness, helplessness,
innocence, submission and slavery.
Among the type of families that seek and employ the hapless girls as child
labour are mostly hails from middle class with secure Government jobs. And
the kind of wages and salaries they dole out to the toiling girls is a
paltry sum... a mere Rs. 200/- or on occasion a Rs. 300/- a month. The case
of a girl child domestic worker missing along with a case of murder of
another girl child domestic worker in a suspicious manner are being
registered with the police in the twin cities of Hyderabad long ago; and
without any headway, both of the cases are unresolved to this day. And to
compound the plight of the girl child domestic workers further on, there are
umpteen number of cases that go unrecorded in the twin city’s Police
Stations. With this kind of insecurity haunting the the girl child domestic
workers in the twin cities of Hyderabad, the plight of domestic and other
fringe workers in the city like the boys and girls employed in the hotels
and restaurants is no better either.
There are about 40 child workers toiling within the various mess premises
run by scores of residential colleges under Sri Chaithanya in the city.
Similarly about 50 child workers who are leading precarious lives within
hotels located in various city court premises like at Ranga Reddy district
court, at the City Civil court premises in Nampally, and in the premises of
various hotels in the Andhra Pradesh High court and in adjoining areas there
are more than 50 child workers eking out their lives with so much difficulty
as in Sri Chaithanya. Comparable data about the entire child labourers
working in the entire twin cities of Hyderabad undoubtedly runs into
thousands.
In some of the hotels, such child labourers time and again are lured into
sweating toil without any salary at all. This is on the pretext of
providing these child labourers with the direly needed food and shelter.
Even if the child labourers demand any salary they are paid no more than Rs.
20, Rs. 30 a day. These child labourers normally moulded into hard working
and very often tolerate even if manhandled by the employer. Most of the
child labourers working in hotels and restaurants are prone to sexual
harassment and abuse inflicted normally by the elder clients resulting in
various dangerous diseases including HIV.
The Act although bans the child labour and restraining hotels and
restaurants from employing children. But the purpose of such legislation
would all be futile if it is not implemented as envisaged..
_ To inform the people that the child labour is banned and is an offence,
all news papers, TV channels and Radio media must undertake publicity for
about an year against employing children in households, hotels and
restaurants.
- All the State and Central Government employees shall have to ordain to
refrain from employing children in their households and places.
-The entire child labour employed within the premises of any of government
establishments or offices shall have to be liberated with immediate effect
and shall be rehabilitated through providing needed education and other
help.
- The Union Ministry of Labour and Employment shall serve Notices to all the
managements of all the hotels, Apartments and Neighborhood Committees
warning them not to employ children as child labour and warn them they would
be punished if they do.
- Conduct raids and liberate all the child labourers from all the hotels and
establishments. And accord them rehabilitation coupled with education.
- All hotels and Apartments shall be under scrutiny and monitoring.
-A Police Officer in each of the every Police Station shall undergo training
classes so as to build awareness about the Child Labour (Abolition and
Regulation) Act 1986
*Yes... The Act is All a Success... But Only for the Time Being:*
For those persons and forces that oppose child labour and believe that
children during their entire childhood and adolescence only needed education
and recreation all for the development of their physical and mental
faculties, The Child Labour (Abolition and Regulation) Act is all a success,
yet it is temporary. Many NGO, struggle oriented and mass organizations, for
long are fighting for the ban of child labour. The Government in turn has
conceded to amend the 1986 ACT to include hotels etc., but yet the amendment
restrains child labour for those who are 14 years old and lower. Thus child
labour continues in respect of children with the age of 15, 16, 17, and so
on. This is a big loophole in the Act and makes the Act futile. A Child,
according to the Juvenile Justice (the care and protection of children) Act
2000 is defined as below the18 years of age it is the same with the
International Child Rights Convention too and to which India as a country
has accepted it is also a signatory to both of these which are being
implemented in India. So now it is imperative to undertake struggle
declaring any 18 year old child doing any work shall have to be treated as
child labour. So now the Child Labour (Abolition and Regulation) Act needed
another amendment and for which we have to fight. Child labour is child
labour whether the age is 16 or 18 it is still an offence. The future of
our children is the future of our country. Hence we have fight for another
amendment in the child labour Act.
- Karthik Navayan
Thanks and regards
Karthik
B.Karthik Navayan, Young Lives
SAVE THE CHILDREN, INDIA, 1st Floor,H.No. 6-3-596/63/8/3/1,
New number 621, Padmavathi Nagar, Erramanjil, Hyderabad
PIN - 500082, Andhra Pradesh, India Phone:+914023371180,
Mobile:+919346677007 , Web - www.younglives.org.uk.
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--
Battula Karthik Navayan,
Advocate,
H.No. 21-7-761,
Opp.High Court Post Office,
Gansi Bazar, Hyderabad,
PIN-500002, AP.
Cell:09346677007,
email:[email protected] <email%[email protected]>
http://karthiknavayan.blogspot.com/
http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Profile.aspx?uid=10379805095932756525
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