New Delhi: Eleven years after the Supreme Court ordered a survey of working children, the government has finally decided to go ahead with one, beginning with hazardous industries.
The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) will conduct “a household survey to properly ascertain the working status of such children,” said S.K. Sinha, director general of the NSSO.
A senior official in the child labour department at the ministry of labour confirmed “the ministry has decided to get a survey done, though the work is still in the initial stages.”
Boy hammering metal at an ironsmith’s workshop at a village in Bishnupur, 50km south of Kolkata.
Based on field surveys conducted by the governments of some states, the ministry currently estimates that 1.3 million children work in hazardous industries. This is just under 10% of the 12.7 million children estimated to be working between the ages of five and 14, according to the 2001 census.
The ministry official, who requested anonymity because “a technical committee was going into the issue”, said that a survey had become necessary to find out if the ministry’s various programmes to rehabilitate child labourers were working.
The flagship National Child Labour Project, which works in 250 child-labour-endemic districts, will be extended to all such districts in the 11th Plan (2007-12), the term for the government’s road map that began in April. “We don’t know, especially with so much migration, how much improvement has happened. Also, we need a family-intensive survey to properly monitor and track the children rescued from such industries,” the official said.
While the ministry claims the number of working children is declining, several nonprofits working in the field are quick to point out the widespread use of children in many industries and occupations, including domestic work which was banned only a year ago.
They also accuse some state governments of not recognizing that child labour continued in industries such as mining. Under the Child Labour Act 1986, 15 occupations and 59 processes are deemed “hazardous”, including the making of glass, bangles and fireworks.
In a 10 December 1996 order, the Supreme Court asked the government to conduct a survey to identify working children, withdraw them from working in hazardousoccupations and ensure their education. It implemented a fine of Rs20,000 per child paid by the employers to a welfare fund set up by the state government, and a job for an adult member of the family of the child or a donation of Rs5,000 to that fund.
Between 1997 and 2002, the government responded by spending Rs249 crore to eliminate child labour and more than doubled that amount to Rs602 crore in the next five-year period, without a proper survey so far.