The relaxation of labour laws across eleven States combined with the closure of schools & reverse migration to rural areas due to the nationwide lockdown will force lakhs of children into child labour, while those already employed will be forced to work longer hours for meagre wages & under hazardous conditions, warn activists & labour law experts.
The changes made to labour laws by various State Govts can be broadly divided into 2 categories — allowing longer working hours & suspending labour rights resulting in lax enforcement — explains Rahul Sapkal, Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
Mr Sapkal said that “The easing of norms will lead to an overall increase in insecurity & informalisation of labour, loss of bargaining power among labourers & deterioration in working conditions, but the impact on children & adolescents will be more severe. There will be an increase in hazardous work”.
India contributes to nearly 15 per cent of the global child & adolescent labourers. There are over ten million working children in the age group of 5 to 14 years & 22.87 million adolescents.
“Even in the absence of these relaxations, children were extremely vulnerable as witnesses of food & livelihood insecurity resulting in them falling out of the safety net,” says CRY’s Preeti Mahara. “It is possible that adolescents may willingly drop out of school to help their families improve their financial resources. The Child Labour Amendment Act, 2016, allows adolescents to work in certain occupations many of which are hazardous but not identified as such by the law because its list of hazardous occupations is derived from the Factories Act, 1948 which was drafted from the point of view of adults.”
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Her organisation is working with partners in 19 States to collaborate with local administration to maintain a headcount of children who are returning to rural areas so that they can be linked with social protection schemes. Ms. Mahara says in the days to come it is imperative that governments work on a vulnerability analysis & reach out to those children who have not returned to schools. “The governments must also launch a rescue & rehabilitation exercise on a large scale & ensure campaigning to curb child labour & spread awareness about social protection services as well as activate anti-human trafficking units.”
When schools remain shut & access to Internet restricted to a vast majority of students, creative methods must be devised to link children to schooling through radio, television & other means, Ms. Mahara recommends.
Last week, the ILO & UNICEF in a joint brief warned that globally millions more children could be forced into child labour as family incomes drop. It highlighted that the Coronanirus pandemic threatens to reverse the gains made in the past twenty years to decrease child labour by 94 million.
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UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said that “Quality education, social protection services & better economic opportunities can be game changers”.
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