RAIDS AGINST CHILD LABOUR

A 6 year old child “Saahil(changed name)” in Jahangirpuri was trapped with a promise of two square meal and place to stay for working in a bangle-making firm. He even did not know his parents name and was working for that bangle-making firm as a child labour.

Finally, Delhi police woke up. Raids are being conducted to stop child labour. May be its late as the idea of raid has come up after the death of 11 year old boy who was a victim of child labour and was brutally beaten by his “Maalik” in July. But “it’s never late to begin the good work”. The first raid is the first step against child labour in which 36 children under 14 year of age were rescued.

Another raid rescued the children from a sweatshop where enslaved children, some as young as 8 years, were forced to make Christmas decorations. Police and child advocates broke the doors of the sweatshop in a surprise raid where the found the imprisoned children who was forcibly made to work for the Christmas decorations. It’s very hard to imagine the situation where the children under and up to the age of 8 was forcibly made to work 19 hours a day. This raid was led by the Human Rights group- Global March for children but the police also got the help but from former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who now serves as the United Nations special envoy for global education. The children were also from outside India and Mr. Brown leaked this video to ABC News and Yahoo.

Despite the law against child labour, 26 migrant kids were revealed doing hard work at the lowest payment in another raid in three textile factories in Delhi. Most of them were from U.P. and Bihar.

India recently passed a law aimed at fighting child labor by making education compulsory up to age 14. But poverty let many kids to work, and certain industries that involve machinery or delicate handiwork prefer their smaller hands.

Sometimes, the factories promise the children only food and a place to sleep. Sometimes, they pay for the children’s work in advance to their parents when the kids are taken for work. After the raids being conducted, 1300 children were rescued all over.

It seems that now we can have a country with no child labour and the raids by the Delhi police is a good start for a positive turn aiming to change the developing country into the developed one.

 By

Anmol Tiwari