By Freny Manecksha

With effect from October 16, 2006, employment of children under 14 as domestic servants and also in the hospitality trade, that is, in roadside eateries, restaurants, hotels, motels or spas, has been banned in the country.

Punishment for violating the ban is a jail term of three months to two years and/or a fine of between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000.

These legislative provisions do not, as yet, mean a total ban on child labour and there is still much debate and discussion taking place on whether the Indian government’s legislation complies with existing international standards (International Labour Organisation conventions 138 and 182, and Article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of Children [CRC]).

However, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has applauded these efforts as an important step towards protecting the fundamental rights of children in the country.

It wants the much-needed legislation to be supported by a system that is able to ensure adequate safety nets and rehabilitation measures for children, such as safe temporary custody and then safe passage and return to families who must be included in the rehabilitative package.

As part of its advocacy and communication efforts, UNICEF is supporting a series of media sensitisation events in six metropolises throughout the country.

One such workshop was held in Mumbai at the Press Club, on November 1, 2006. It helped clarify a number of issues related to child labour in general, and the recent legislation. The workshop also provided a good picture of the Maharashtra government’s efforts to prevent child labour in the state.

For example, doubts have been voiced about whether the recent notification will be effective, as the use of children as domestic labour is a socially accepted practice especially among India’s affluent and educated classes.

Usha Rai of the Centre for Media Studies, and a former journalist, said that the recent notification was necessary because domestic work is the least regulated sector. Children often work for over 14 hours a day.

Surveys show that girls constitute 46.2% of this workforce and are vulnerable to sexual abuse, as in the case of the 10-year-old girl who was raped and killed by her employer’s brother in June 2006, in Mumbai’s Lokhandwalla area. The employer was also arrested as an accomplice and for her attempts to cover up the crime, which was initially registered as a suicide.

There are also reasonable grounds to suspect the role of recruiting agents in procuring girls used as domestic help.

The legislation, Rai stresses, should translate to not just a ban on child labour but to an enhancement of the social status of the children through rehabilitative measures.

Vijayalakshmi Arora, project officer, child protection, of UNICEF stresses the need for coordinated action, as child labour is a very complex issue where no one particular intervention will work. It requires convergence on all fronts -- issues such as migration, employment guarantee schemes, minimum wages for rural and urban labourers, and implementation of anti-poor schemes like the Indira Awas Yojana, etc.

One of UNICEF’s pilot interventions in Maharashtra has been for children working in slaughterhouses in Parbhani, and the powerlooms of Bhiwandi.

Another important initiative is inter-state dialogue. This is important because rescue and repatriation of child labourers to their homes in various states has not necessarily translated to rehabilitation.

A dialogue was initiated with the Orissa government, from where many child labourers hail, to work out the mechanisms of the juvenile justice system. Existing civil society organisations have been used to help integrate rescued children back with their families and to ensure that their rights to childhood are endorsed through economic packages for the families.

 Special taskforce

The Maharashtra government has set up a special taskforce to help implement the regulations on child labour.

The state’s labour commissioner, B D Sanap, said cases like that of 12-year-old Mohammed Kausar Ansari of Govandi in Mumbai highlighted the need for such a force. Mohammed was admitted to hospital for hepatitis, but died on April 18, 2005. A post-mortem revealed signs of physical and sexual abuse.

The resultant uproar from press and the public forced the government to raid sweatshops in Dharavi and Govandi that employed children. After another child, 11-year-old Ahmed Khan, also from Govandi, died the same month the state labour minister convened a meeting at which three civil society organisations -- Pratham, Bal Prafulta and Saathi -- the police, Mahila Bal Kalyan department and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s Shop Act department were present. A taskforce was constituted to eradicate child labour, with all these organisations working together.

The taskforce will operate in all 35 districts of the state, under the chairmanship of the district collector of each district.

It involves the following authorities: superintendent of police, chief executive officer of the zilla parishad, district women and child development officer, district education officer of the zilla parishad, rural development centre, municipal commissioner, assistant labour commissioner, and civil society organisations.

The official estimate is that there are some 33,720 child labourers in Mumbai toiling in various industrial establishments in Dharavi, Madanpura, Govandi, Bhuleshwar, Sewri, Kandivli, Malad, Chembur and Shahu Nagar. These establishments range from the zari industry, farsan-making, the gold business, plastic manufacture, bakeries, garages and the garment trade.

Till August 2006, the taskforce conducted 46 raids on establishments suspected of using child labour. Around 1,846 child labourers have been rescued and 319 employers arrested. It is also believed that 23,483 children have been sent back by their employers out of fear of raids.

Raids are conducted after locating areas where it is highly probable that child labour is being used. Planning and executing raids is done in coordination with the police, civil society organisations and shop inspectors of the municipal corporation.

The plan also calls for coordinating with the authorities of children’s homes and making arrangements for food and transportation of rescued children to the police station and children’s homes.

The powers for punitive action come under provisions of various Acts and various departments. They are applied keeping in mind the nature of the activity and the age of the child. These include:

• Indian Penal Code (Section 374): Up to one year’s imprisonment and/or a fine.
• Juvenile Justice Act (age: under-18 years) (Section 23 and 26): Six months’ imprisonment and/or a fine, up to three years’ imprisonment/and or a fine.
• Factories Act (age: 14 years) (Section 67): Up to two years’ imprisonment and/or a fine that may extend up to Rs 1 lakh.
• Shops and Establishments Act (age: 15 years) (Section 32): Three months’ imprisonment.
• Bonded Labour Act (Section 14 [B])
• Minimum Wages Act (Rule 24 (i)(c), normal working day is four-and-a-half hours): Six months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of Rs 500.
• Motor Transport Workers Act (Section 21): Three months’ imprisonment and/or a Rs 500 fine.

State action plan

Maharashtra is the first state in the country to have prepared a state action plan for the elimination of child labour. The stategovernment will make available a one-time fund of Rs 18.65 crore for the plan’s implementation.

Its aim is to ensure a state that is free of child labour, with all children in school. It recognises that every kind of work for a child is hazardous.

The objectives of the action plan include:

• Identifying working children.
• Rescuing child labourers.
• Economic rehabilitation of rescued child labourers.
• Education for rescued child labourers.
• Ensuring effective mechanisms of support for the families.
• Preventing children from becoming labourers.
• Convergence of the development schemes of various departments.

The interventions will include:

• Survey/identification of child labour.
• Release and rescue of child labourers.
• Preventive intervention.
• Focus on children of migrant workers.
• Special focus on domestic child labourers and those in the hospitality sector -- roadside eateries, hotels, restaurants, etc.

 Implementation

To enforce the recent notification extending the regulations and laws on child labour to domestic servants and the hospitality trade, the government has sent a circular to all housing societies informing them that it is illegal to employ children as domestic servants.

The special taskforce, acting on specific information, will soon undertake raids on buildings where children are employed, or in eateries and establishments where they may be working.

There is a proposed amendment to the Bombay Shops and Establishment Act 1984 for making the offence of employing child labour non-bailable and enhancing the punishment and fine to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to Rs 25,000.

The need to rehabilitate working children is obvious. The state action plan therefore provides for:

• Educational rehabilitation of child labourers under the National Child Labour Project, Indus, and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) schemes.
• Economic rehabilitation of families of child labourers through convergence of existing welfare schemes of various departments.

District collectors will be entrusted with the task of rehabilitating the child labourers and their families.

Political will and public cooperation

Farida Lambay of Pratham and vice-principal of Nirmala Niketan School of Social Work, Mumbai, says that for the first time there appears to be a genuine political will to end the practice of child labour. If efforts in Mumbai and Maharashtra succeed, it will have a ripple effect in other states as well.

According to Lambay, there are broadly two categories of child workers: children without families working in the ragpicking trade, in zari sweatshops, hawking, or in vegetable markets; and children working as beggars. Many of them come from Bihar, Orissa, Nepal, Rajasthan and West Bengal.

In the zari shops, children as young as six years old work either as shagird or apprentices, earning Rs 200 a month, or as karigars, earning Rs 1,000-Rs 3,000 a month after toiling for anything between 10-18 hours a day.

The children have no communication with their families back in the villages, and are allowed to go home only once or twice a year.

Despite sending their children to Mumbai to work, the economic condition of the families back home does not really improve. The only benefit is that children learn a skill, but often at the cost of their health and risk of sexual and physical abuse.

The new policy has adopted a two-pronged strategy: a ban on child labour and an emphasis on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and similar schemes that ensure every child’s right to education.

Lambay estimates that civil society organisations have been successful in mainstreaming 4,000 children rescued from sweatshops and other forms of labour. The public, she says, must stop being cynical and work to make the effort a success.

Numbers are difficult to come by, but the Government of India estimates that there are around 185,000 children working as domestic labour (2001 census). Civil society organisations, however, have very different estimates and place the number of children employed in the hospitality trade and as domestic labour at 20 million.

Other aspects of rehabilitation also need to be looked into, such as:

• Improved functioning of residential institutions where the children can be housed.
• Appropriate care for traumatised children.
• Making the police and other authorities aware of and sensitive to the issue. One significant example is how the vocabulary used nowadays is mukt karna, not pukkarna.

There has been some difference on the ground, Lambay says. A helpline for children called Childline (dial 1098), and trade unions in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai are helping to free children working in restaurants or as domestic labour in homes.

Under a central government notification, no child must be employed in government canteens or in bureaucrats’ homes.

Public awareness on the issue of employing children as domestic labour is increasing. Pratham gets 10 calls a day from individuals who are aware of the recent notification and want to send the children back home but don’t know how to do so.