The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Call for more awareness to wipe out child labour

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jul 22, 2007
ePaper

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Call for more awareness to wipe out child labour

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Many people are still not shocked or outraged by the practice of child labour , Shantha Sinha, chairperson, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, said on Saturday.

Child labour could be eradicated only when everyone became conscious that children were working, and were moved to take action. At the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Indian Overseas Bank Officers’ Association, she said children continued to be employed in all forms of labour because they came cheap and would work long hours without complaining. She had seen children as young as three years working in a construction site at Bellary.

While the economy was booming , it was important to ask what this meant to the poor. The benefits of the growth were not being shared appropriately in India, she said. Also, the poor too wanted to go to school. “In our experience of working with the poor, we never found it difficult to persuade parents to send their children to school. And we also realised that when children stop working and go to school, wages also increase,” Ms. Sinha said. “It is a myth that poverty creates child labour. That is just an excuse to perpetrate the practice of getting children to work. It is actually child labour that creates poverty.”

She urged the Association to pass a resolution urging all its members not to employ children as domestic labour. They could even declare that they would not advance loans to those who employed child labour. , Ms. Sinha suggested.

Later, she received a cheque for Rs. 1 lakh — the Association’s contribution to the fight against child labour — from J.D. Sharma, president, IOBOA.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail