The Hindu : Their childhood is for labouring

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 13, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

Their childhood is for labouring

By C. Maya

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM June 12. The gaunt face with expressionless eyes and the young but work-worn palms that serve food to customers and clean tables immediately touch a chord in the heart.

He could not be more than 12 or 15 years, but for the child standing before you there is no room for the joy and revelry in his life, especially when he is the sole bread-winner of his family.

Today (June 12) happened to be the International Day for Prohibition of Child Labour, but for many children who toil from dawn to dusk in hotels and construction sites in the city to make a living, it was business as usual.

Children pick rags and work in hotels as cleaners, as apprentices in workshops and help out on construction sites. A large number of children are clandestinely employed as domestic helps and remain inaccessible to social workers or labour officials.

The official stand so far has been that there is no child labour per se here and that the boys that one normally see working in hotels are mostly from neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

A total of 733 child workers had been identified in the district by investigators at the Loyola College in a survey conducted in 1996. The study brought forth an interesting revelation _ that only 19 per cent of these child workers were from the neighbouring States and that the rest were from the district itself.

Labour Department officials point out that while some child workers are juveniles who have run away from home, the majority of them have been sent to work by their parents themselves to earn extra money for the family. Child workers are preferred by employers too because they are prepared to work faithfully for long hours for meagre wages and they need not be enrolled as permanent employees with other benefits.

The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, says that no child should be allowed to work for more than three hours continuously and not more than four-and-a-half hours a day. Every child worker should be given a weekly off and he should not be made to work between 7 p.m. and 8 a.m.

But the Act is so fraught with legal loopholes that it is almost impossible to bring to book those employing children, Labour Department officials say.

``The child workers have been tutored to say that they are above 14 years and that they are being paid well. We have no provision to take away the child immediately and before we can take action, he is sent away or goes into hiding,'' points out R. Sukumaran, District Labour Officer (Enforcement).

Even if the case gets to the prosecution stage, the employer only needs to produce a medical certificate stating that the person in question is not a `child', for him to be let off the hook.

Following a Supreme Court directive in 1996, the State Government has constituted Child Labour Rehabilitation-cum-Welfare Societies in every district, chaired by the District Collectors.

The Labour Department and the Adult Education Department had been directed to jointly run non-formal schools for child workers in the evenings. Two such centres used to function in the district, where several children working in hotels used to attend classes with the consent of their employers.

But these centres have been defunct for long as attendance has not been regular. After long hours of work, most of the children were too tired at the end of the day to sit with books. Employers too found it a nuisance to have children break work, Labour Department officials say.

The Government has now come out with the draft of the proposed Kerala Child Labour (Relief, Rehabilitation and Welfare) Act 2002, which is aimed at the total prohibition of child labour in all its manifestations.

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Their childhood is for labouring