The Hindu : Project to rescue 80,000 child workers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 18, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Project to rescue 80,000 child workers

By Our Staff Reporter

VELLORE, FEB. 17. Eighty thousand child workers in 20 districts in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra will be rescued, enrolled in schools and their families rehabilitated under a $ 40-million Indo-U.S. Collaboration programme on elimination of child labour to be implemented through the International Labour Organisation in three years. The U.S. Government and the Government of India will each contribute an equal share of $ 20 million (about Rs. 90.80 crores) for the Indo-U.S. (INDUS) Project.

Talking to newspersons during a visit to a special school for child workers under the Child Labour Welfare Project at Geoffrapet, near here, today, Arnold L.Levine, U.S. Deputy Under-Secretary for International Labour Affairs, said the ILO project, launched in New Delhi on Monday, would be dovetailed into the ongoing National Child Labour Project to strengthen the Government efforts at eliminating child labour.

He was pleased to see the children playing happily in the special school.

Earlier, he interacted with the teacher and the children. He asked 9-year-old Nadiya whether she liked to go to school and she replied in the affirmative. He saw for himself the `Joy of Learning' method of teaching arithmetic, using low-cost materials. He enjoyed the game, in which a boy with ten-coloured paper tails hanging on his back walked round, while the children sitting on the floor removed them one after another, a method adopted to teach subtraction. On seeing the children play, `Put your right hand in, put your right hand out......', Mr. Levine said he played the same game when he was a boy.

Focus on beedi industry, quarries

A. Sukesh, Labour Adviser of the U.S. Embassy, New Delhi, said the ILO project would concentrate on children working in the beedi industry and stone quarries in Vellore, Kancheepuram and Tiruchi districts.

Provision of micro-credit to the families of the child workers would form part of the INDUS project.

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