Anti-graft fiat gives UP child labour a fillip
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The order was meant to stop corrupt officials from harassing factory owners in Uttar Pradesh, but it has ended up giving child labour a fresh run in the state.
A National Human Rights Commission report says that the number of child labourers in UP has seen an increase, the first since around 70,000 bonded children were freed at the behest of the Supreme Court in 1997. Based on the survey of bonded labourers, mostly children, in the districts of Varanasi, Bhadoi, Mirzapur and Allahabad, the report said that the ‘‘detection of child labour in the state has totally stopped because of the one-line directive by the government declaring the end of the inspector raj.’’ The directive, issued by the Mulayam Singh Yadav government on August 29, 2003, said, ‘‘henceforth there will be no inspections of factories by state officials’’. The order was meant to weed out the petty corruption indulged in by a large number of officials in charge of inspecting establishments to oversee labour law implementation. The NHRC claims that after the order was implemented, officials stopped their inspections of factories and other work places. And although the UP government later modified its order under pressure from NGOs and allowed inspections on specific complaints, the officials concerned had stopped being proactive about keeping a strict vigil on the illegal employment of children. The commission, however, appreciated the efforts of the UP government in rehabilitating the freed children, particularly in giving them education and setting up vigilance committees in 70 districts to detect child labourers and monitor their rehabilitation. This, said the report, had resulted in a substantial increase in the employment of children in hazardous and non-hazardous categories of labour after 2003, till when only 28 cases had been detected. Source: Indian Express |
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