Minors work as help at CWC chief’s home
ACTION Child rights panel head will now probe the matter BHARATPUR:Two
minor girls have been working as the domestic help at the house of chairperson of Bharatpur child welfare committee. HT photographed the two girls cleaning the house on Wednesday morning. When the girls saw the camera, they threw the brooms and ran inside.
The Juvenile Justice Act requires state governments to establish child welfare committees (CWC) in every district to protect the interest of children. Each CWC consists of a chairperson and four members. The chairperson should be a person well versed in child welfare issues. In Bharatpur, CWC chief Saroj Lohiya allows child labour in her own home.
She said that the girls’ mother, Narmada Devi, is the domestic help at her house in Rajendra Nagar colony. “She’s unwell for a week and has been sending her daughters to work. I tell them not to work and focus on studies. They are poor so they don’t want to lose on the daily wage,” Lohiya said.
The girls’ father, Uttam Chand, pulls a rickshaw for a living. He has three daughters and a son. The eldest girl passed Class 12 this year. The second will appear for Class 12 in 2018 and the third daughter passed Class 8 in 2016. The son is too young to go to school.
“I am unwell so I had sent my daughters to work to those homes where I work as a domestic help,” the girls’ mother told Hindustan Times. Rajasthan State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (RSCPCR) chairperson Manan Chaturvedi said child labour is illegal. “I will probe into the matter and take action if the report is true,” she said.