VISAKHAPATNAM | Jun 14, 2015: The recent Child Labour Amendment Bill will encourage underage labour and push more children into working, claim NGOs and child rights activists, who have raised questions on certain new provisions under the amended Bill.
According to the amended bill of Child Labour Prohibition And Regulation Act (CLPRA) 2012, which was cleared by the cabinet in 2015, only four industries out of 18 will be considered hazardous for employing children below 14 and in some cases below 18.
These include foundries, mines, plastic units and fibre glass, and handling of toxic inflammable and explosives. In 2006, two occupations were added to the list of hazardous industries for children below 14 — working as domestic labour and in dhabas — increasing the total number from 16 to 18.
Occupations like elephant-caring, diving, slaughter house, handloom, powerloom, fire cracker workshop, and rag picking, which were considered hazardous for the last 28 years for children below 14 are now considered non-hazardous and children can work in these occupations if they are run by the family.
According to the statistics provided by Child Rights and You (CRY), in India, there are around 10 million child labourers. Of these 14.7% child labour force is from AP and Telangana. These states together have the sixth highest concentration of child labour in India. Children are trafficked not just for sexual purpose but for labour too.
"Since children below the age of 14 years can continue to work in family enterprises, agriculture, artisanship, entertainment industry (except circus), the amendment is likely to drag more children into unregulated conditions in BT cotton fields. More children are likely to be trafficked to work in home-based environments as nobody will check whether they belong to the same family or not and whether they are working after school hours or not. More invisible forms of child labour and much more exploitation will go unseen and unheard," said Komal Ganotra, director of policy, research and advocacy at CRY.
Since only four industries will remain hazardous to child employment, other industries can continue without being monitored for the number of working hours put in by a child. Similarly, there will be nobody to check if the child has migrated to another place to work with the family in any kind of seasonal work such as soya bean farming, cotton farming, jasmine plucking which begins at 3 am.
"Further, when it comes to works like bidi rolling, agarbatti making, gem polishing, outsource work, there's no monitoring mechanism to find whether the child is going to school. The child can even get addicted to tobacco while working in the bidi industry. Worse, in the name of skill development, the child is forced to take upon the traditional family work be it that of a barber, shoemaker, tailor and so on. It's leading to teachers and other students addressing the child in school by the name of his caste instead of his actual name." said advocate Abdul Raqueeb, member of Child Welfare Committee, Visakhapatnam.
(Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)