108 child labourers rescued in 5 years: labour commissioner office

Indian Express: Pune: Sunday, November 04, 2012.

The Labour Commissioner’s office in Pune said they have rescued 108 children from work sites since 2007 and the number has declined over the years. The number is in stark contrast to the figure of over 1,100 complaints to a helpline run by an NGO in Pune in the same period which show that the number is rising again.

In a reply to an RTI query filed by The Indian Express, the labour department said between 2007 and 2012, 108 labourers under 14 years of age have been rescued and about 95 FIRs have been registered with individual police stations under Pune city and rural police jurisdiction. “About 75 per cent of these children were rescued from eateries in Pune,” said deputy labour commissioner S V Kakde.

He claimed, “In 2006 a special task force was set by the government. After that we have made some important mass raids. The number of child labourers is definitely declining. In the five years before 2006, we had made 20 rescues. In the next five years the number has grown five times.”

Child rights activists and members of the NGOs working in the field said the number is gross underestimation of the gravity of the problem. Anuradha Sahastrabuddhe of NGO Dnyandevi Childline said, “Since 2007, our organisation has received over 1,100 complaints of child labour on our helpline. On an average we get three calls daily. The number of children rescued is a bit more as in some of the cases the number of rescued children is more than one and in some of the cases we cannot reach out to the child. The difference in the numbers of the labour department and that of ours tell you the story.”

Amita Naidu, a child rights activist, said, “Red tape is the problem. The officers from the labour department leave out a lot of cases and ignore child labour of short duration. For example children from slum areas taking up jobs at shops during festive season, or girls accompanying their mothers on domestic work. The mechanism of rehabilitation is also flawed. It becomes even more difficult if the children are from other states. After a child is rescued from the workplace, he or she is handed over to women and child welfare department. They too have problems in monitoring rehabilitation.”

A labour department officer, who did not wish to be named, said, “The process of rescuing children according to the norms is inefficient and in most cases the complaints are not attended properly due to lack of manpower. In many cases, by the time we reach the spot, someone alerts the owner of the hotel.”