45 voices, one demand: End child labour

NC Saxena, Harsh Mander, Syeda Hameed, Arun Maira,  Shantha Sinha, Tarun Tejpal, Sagarika Ghose, Arindam Sengupta, Meenakshi Natarajan, Shoma Chaudhury, Chandrajit Banerjee and others call for end to child labour under 14

New Delhi, June 21: Forty-five signatures, one demand. End all child labour under the age of 14. Forty-five prominent individuals from different walks of life came together to endorse a petition addressed to the Prime Minister seeking a ban on all forms of child labour under the age of 14.

Save the Children asked 45 eminent members of society to endorse the petition at the end of a 45-day campaign against child labour. The signatories included members of the newly reconstituted National Advisory Council Harsh Mander, NC Saxena and Anu Agha; Members of the Planning Commission Arun Maira and Syeda Hameed; Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights Shantha Sinha; Executive Editor of The Times of India Arindam Sengupta; AICC Secretary and Congress MP Meenakshi Natarajan; Senior CNN-IBN journalist Sagarika Ghose; Congress MP EMS Nachiappan; Oxfam CEO Nisha Agrawal; BJD MP Kalikesh Singh Deo; Tehelka Editor Tarun Tejpal and Executive Editor of Tehelka Shoma Chaudhury; actor Rahul Bose; Rajya Sabha MP Viplove Thakur; Director-General of CII Chandrajit Banerjee; Lt General (retd) Satish Nambiar; Managing Director of Fortis Healthcare Ltd Shivinder M Singh and Congress MP Jose K Mani.

“The Government should ensure that the millions of children now engaged in child labour are included in the implementation of the Right to Education Act (RTE Act). With this historic piece of legislation, the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act (CLPRA) must be amended immediately. You cannot have one law that promises elementary education to all children and another one regulating child labour. Children cannot be both working and in school at the same time — let’s ensure that it is only the latter,” Harpal Singh, Board Chair of Save the Children, said. The RTE Act that came into force on April 1 this year guarantees the right of every child between the ages of 6 and 14 to free and compulsory elementary education.

Officially, there are close to 13 million children who are now engaged in child labour; unofficial estimates put this figure at over 40 million. The CLPRA makes a distinction between hazardous and non hazardous categories of work for children below 14. “There cannot be any distinction between hazardous and non hazardous labour for children below 14. And in any case, child labour in any form is detrimental to the physical, mental and cognitive growth and development of the child. By allowing children below 14 to work, we stand morally diminished. We rob them of their childhood,” Singh said.

Approximately 70 per cent of children in child labour are in agriculture. Yet, the CLPRA does not take cognizance of this category of children. The law must be amended to include the millions of children engaged in child labour on agricultural farms.