Article Source: Khaleej Times

Date of Issue: September 19, 2007

Title of the article: CPM turns a blind eye to child labour, says report

Communists claim that they are fighting for the oppressed and the suppressed but they are ummoved by the plight of child workers, a report compiled by the federal Labour Ministry has revealed.

According to the explosive report, CPM-ruled West Bengal lags behind most states when it comes to clamping down on child labour and prosecuting those hiring children below the age of 14 as laid down under the Child Labour Act.

Since 1986, when the Child Labour Act came into force, West Bengal government conducted 90,656 raids but detected only 4,153 violations. Among the violators, 79 were prosecuted. And there were just three convictions.

The corresponding figures for Andhra Pradesh are 206,832, 70922, 31,375 and 15,294. And Tamil Nadu's figures are 1231,060, 6122, 4165 and 917.

So are officials in Left Front-ruled West Bengal hands in glove with industries employing and exploiting child wokers to boost their profits? Even those violators who are caught, go scot free. Compared to West Bengal where only three violators have been convicted, even a small state like Goa has seven convictions to its credit. Delhi and Karnataka have 257 and 197 convictions respectively.

Ironically West Bengal is in the same league as Bihar where three persons have been convicted.

Child rights activists said Bengal's dismal figure of 79 prosecutions launched in over 4,000 cases suggests "lack of intent".

"A poor conviction rate can occur because of genuine problems cases may run into, but nothing stops the authorities from at least prosecuting the accused", said Kailash Satyarthi, a campaigner against child labour.

West Bengal Labour department officials, however, pointed to the over 90,000 investigations they have launched. "If there was lack of intent on our part, there would not have been such a high number of inspections into alleged cases of child labour", an official argued.

Unlike several other states, industrial child labour in Bengal is restricted to a few areas, the official said.

"Child labour is mainly in two forms here - domestic labour, but more than that, agricultural labour."

Although agriculture in itself does not find a mention on the list of hazardous occupations banned for children under 14, work involving use of pesticides, insecticides or chemicals is proscribed. "Often, the hazardous work in agriculture is hard to distinguish" the official said.

Activists and officials of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights call the explanation an "excuse".

"States that have achieved some success have shown that the approach needed is one where all possible cases are investigated. If you target all children in agriculture, you will identify those who are in hazardous work", said its chairperson Shanta Sinha.