The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : “Sensitise people to child rights”

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Wednesday, Jun 24, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

“Sensitise people to child rights”

Staff Reporter

It can help to tackle child labour menace: special camp

Create awareness: V.P. Velusamy, Chairman, Aranthangi Taluk Legal Services Committee, addressing an anti-child labour campaign.

PUDUKOTTAI: Service organisations and women members of self-help groups should play a pivotal role in sensitising the masses to the child’s rights, particularly with regard to the right to education.

It will be a direct contribution in the cause of checking the menace of child labour, said the Chairman of Aranthangi Taluk Legal Services Committee, V.P. Velusamy.

Presiding over a special camp organised by the Committee as part of observance of ‘Anti-Child Labour Day’ at Thayagam Matriculation School at Aranthangi recently, Mr. Velusamy said that any amount of legal efforts by the judiciary and Police Department would not be suffice to contain the evils of child labour.

In several cases, it has been found that parents preferred child labour to education, only under duress situation stemming out of by sheer poverty.

In this context, Mr. Velusamy appealed to the volunteers of non-governmental organisations and women members of self-help groups to keep a vigil against child labour and adopt persuasive means to create awareness among the masses to desist from seeking supplementary income through their children.

The volunteers’ inter-personal communication with the parents relying on child labour would act as a catalyst for providing compulsory education to children and thereby contribute to eliminating this social evil, he observed.

The Judicial Magistrate, Aranthangi, T. Pannerselvam, spoke on the legal protection incorporated in the various Acts in the interest of safeguarding child rights.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which India was a signatory, was aimed at overall development of children.

The president of the Bar Association, M. Shanmugasundaram; the Co-ordinator of Thayagam Trust, S. Jabarullah and the Principal of the school, A. Vaideeswaran were among those who spoke.

Earlier, the office-bearers of the Committee distributed pamphlets on ‘Anti-Child Labour’ in parts of the town.

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