India Home to 28 Million Child Labourers
Bangalore: India has time and again stated the need to abolish child labour and the right every child has to education. However the country still faces the anguish of children being employed and made to work in horrible conditions that poses threat to their lives. Caught in this situation are teenage miners in the ‘rathole’ mines in Meghalaya, as reported by Gardiner Harris for NY Times.
According to Unicef, 28 million children in India are working, even after the enactment of the 2010 law that has made it mandate for children between the ages of 6 and 14 to be in school. Chid labours are found in shops, kitchen, factories, farms and construction sites. No matter how many laws are formulated it hardly does much to solve India’s most blatant issue.
A child protection specialist at Unicef, Vandhana Kandhari said, “We have very good laws in this country. It’s our implementation that’s the problem,” as reported by NY Times.
Such is the case of teenage miners, who work due to poverty, rickety schools, corruption and insufficient teachers.
Like the 17 year old, Suresh Thapa who has been working in the mines since he was a child and expects his four younger brothers to follow the trend.
