‘Amendments will promote child labour’

NEW DELHI: Child rights activists have expressed apprehensions that the proposed amendments to the Child Labour Prohibition Act will promote the menace, besides being difficult to implement.

They believe even if the amendments are enacted and implemented in the right context, they would adversely affect a child’s overall development.

The government is likely to introduce a number of amendments such as exempting children working in family-owned enterprises from the purview of the law.

Reacting to the amendments, Komal Ganotra of child rights advocacy group CRY said given their experience, children have to work for six to seven hours in family-owned enterprises after spending hours in school.

Another fear is the exemptions proposed will boost child trafficking as it will become difficult to establish if the work is family-owned or has been outsourced from corporate

“Children of an entire family can now be pushed into child labour,” another activist said.

An activist with United Nations Children Fund added that the amendments would push child labour in work-intensive industries such as embroidery, garments and jewellery since most of it is home-based. “If the amendments are enacted, the good work done in the past three years will be lost. I urge the government to hold public consultations before bringing the amendments in Parliament,” she said.

The activists also expressed reservations on prohibiting adolescents from working in hazardous industries, saying the definition of hazardous was not very clear. The definition in the 1986 law listed 60 processes but has been limited to factories, mines and explosives in the proposed amendments. AN ACTIVIST WITH UNICEF A CHILD RIGHTS ACTIVIST