Times of India: New
Delhi: Wednesday, June 12, 2013.
If you go by
the labour department, very few children work as domestic helps across the
country. An RTI petition revealed that only 17 children in Maharashtra, 9
children in Tamil Nadu,
12 in Gujarat
and 21 in Uttar Pradesh were rescued from homes in the past five years.
Activists wish the reality was as rosy. RTI activist Umesh K Gupta, who had filed
the petition, wonders how the labour department missed so many child domestic
workers who could be seen in urban colonies. He says the data only reveals how
poorly the 2006 notification prohibiting employment of children as domestic
helps is implemented.
The RTI reply
has not provided any data on child domestic workers from many states including
Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Punjab, Rajasthan and
Uttarakhand. In Assam, only four children were rescued, in Kerala three, eight
from Orissa and five from West Bengal over the past five years. "The
negligible number of rescues in theses states masks the reality. Everyone knows
and sees so many children employed as domestic helps in Mumbai alone. Then how
is it possible that only 17 children were rescued in the whole of Maharashtra
in the span of five years? I think
There is poor
implementation of the law. Inspections are not carried out properly. Naturally,
very few children are eventually rescued by the labour department," says
Umesh.
The labour
and employment ministry data also has prosecution and conviction statistics of
cases from the non-domestic sectors. The data shows a huge disparity in the
number of people prosecuted and those convicted of employing children. In
Andhra Pradesh, for instance, there were 138 prosecutions but only eight
convictions in 2008 and in Delhi, there were 581 prosecutions but only eight
convictions in 2010.
There is a
move to amend the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act which will
apply to children up to 18 years. Children aged up to 14 years will be defined
as 'child' and those up to 18 years will be defined as 'adolescent'. The
punishment for employing children will also be increased from 2 years to 5
years of imprisonment. Despite these changes, activists say implementation of
the Act is the key in dealing with the issue.
"Amendment
in the Act is a welcome step, but the proper implementation of the Act is the
biggest challenge. Accountability of labour officers needs to be fixed if we
want to ensure that every child goes to school and not to work. The RTI data
clearly indicates how sensitive our labour department is in identifying and
rescuing child labourers. This puts a question mark on the way inspections are
made under Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986," says Sehjo
Singh, director, policy at ActionAid India.
Only
Karnataka seems to be relatively active when it comes to rescuing child
domestic workers. They have rescued 392 children from homes since 2008.
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