Traffickers luring poor Indian kids to work
CHENNAI: As schools break for summer, human traffickers across India are convincing impoverished parents to send their children to work over the holidays in factories and farms, campaigners said.
Anti-trafficking groups are urging the government to crack down on child labour during the two-month break, warning that many children never return to school once they start working.
“Playgrounds and neighbourhood shops become hunting grounds for traffickers,” said Kuralamuthan Thandavarayan of the International Justice Mission, an anti-trafficking charity.
“They track children from poor families and convince parents that it is a waste of time to allow their children to play or stay at home when they can earn instead.”
There are an estimated 10.1 million workers between the ages of 5 and 14 in India, according to the International Labour Organisation. More than half of them toil on farms and over a quarter are in the manufacturing sector embroidering clothes, weaving carpets, making matchsticks and bangles.
“In many villages, with both parents out working, teenagers at home during summer break are lured by recruiters looking to hire cheap labour in the (textile) mills,” said Joseph Raj of the nonprofit Trust for Education and Social Transformation.
Other children join their parents in brick kilns, where they work between November and June, when the rainy season begins. The recruitment and payment systems in these kilns trap seasonal migrant workers in a cycle of bonded labour, according to a report last year by the rights groups Anti-Slavery International and Volunteers for Social Justice.