Indian police rescue child workers in city raids
Published: June 23, 2005
The fight is on!
In an early morning raid, dozens of police storm through the narrow, dusty backstreets of central Bombay.
Amid the clamour of startled residents and workers, the officers scatter, darting in and out of tiny two-storey workshops lining the streets, searching for evidence.
But in India’s bustling capital of films and finance, where underworld dons and tricksters dominate the criminal circuit, this is not a raid for drugs or black money.
This is a raid for children.
There are more than 50,000 children working in Bombay’s gold-polishing and leather-stitching industries, while thousands more are street hawkers or shoe cleaners, although the law prohibits anyone under the age of 14 from working.
“We realized we had to try and do something about it, and started conducting raids in an attempt to rescue the children and arrest the employers,” a police officer said.
More than 600 child workers have been rescued from the grimy back alleys of the city since the raids on workshops and factories began in April. About 100 employers have been charged for mistreatment of children.
In one raid, 8-year-old Lokhikant Mondroe from the eastern West Bengal state was found with three other boys crammed in a dank and airless room, polishing gold using harmful chemicals.
Like many child workers, he worked 12 hours a day and earned nothing for his labor except food and some floor space to sleep.
“I stopped going to school in the village as we didn’t have enough money and then my grandfather brought me to Bombay and left me here eight months ago,” Lokhikant said.
DANGEROUS CONDITIONS
Others rescued from the city’s filthy, narrow lanes have spent years confined to tiny shacks, stitching leather shoes and handbags or embroidering gold threads.
Police rely on tip-offs because it is difficult to track down child workers, with employers setting up small units in crammed back alleys, where the children are hidden from public eye.
An estimated 17 million children are working in India, the majority on farms or making carpets or firecrackers but with an increasing number in textiles.
Employers believe the small fingers of children are better suited for intricate work such as gold embroidery. With increased competition in global textiles, particularly with China, child rights activists fear the situation could get worse.
“They are in a race to offer cheaper products and also maximise their profits, so children are their best bet,” said Farida Lambay from Pratham, a charity for street children.
Many work in dangerous conditions making firecrackers, hand-rolled cigarettes and glass, exposed to hazardous chemicals and open furnaces spewing toxic gases. Children in the carpet trade spend long hours bent over looms, ending up with poor eyesight and stiff fingers.
Human rights groups say many children have been working since the age of four or five, and by the time they reach adulthood they may be irrevocably sick or deformed.
Grinding poverty is the main reason families from eastern states such as Bihar and West Bengal send their children to work.
“We believe agents are going to poor villages and asking parents to send their children to work in the cities, promising they will be taken care of and paid good salaries,” says social worker Mansoor Qadri from a childrens’ charity, Saathi.
“The children are often put on trains or buses destined for Bombay by one agent, and then met on arrival by another agent who takes them to the workshops.”
INADEQUATE LAWS
While social activists believe children will only stop working if poverty is wiped out, they say authorities must build on the successes of the Bombay raids.
But international agencies also say there are too many holes in the laws on child labor and trafficking.
In a State Department report on human trafficking released this month, India was among 27 countries including China and Zimbabwe slammed for not doing enough to tackle the problem.
“Indian laws … do not offer sufficient criminal penalties for those who are responsible for forced or bonded labor, child labor, and domestic servitude,” the report said.
The report said while the law has enough provisions for freeing and rehabilitating children in forced labor, the maximum sentence in such cases is only three years.
The International Labour Office says the law needs updating.
“Overall, it is too much legislation, too scattered and not integrated, and as a result inadequate to fully address the issue appropriately,” said Herve Berger, the ILO’s senior specialist on child labor in India.
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