Help child labors; don’t make them your helping hand!
In spite of the rising literacy rate of our country we can see small children working in almost every part of our nation. Be it at a tea shop, a hawkers' spot, a dumping ground, a restaurant and even a hazardous place such as cracker factory, child labor is visible everywhere. The main reason for this is that Children are cheap labors. As a child is weak and can’t protest or stand up for himself/herself, one can extract more work out of them without paying them much.
India has highest number of laborers in the world less than 14 yrs of age. There are about 60 million children working as labors. But these are just the known numbers. The real picture is even worse as most kids are “hidden workers” and there condition is not even known to the world. Total stats for child labour-12.6 million and around 0.12 million children work in hazardous job like cracker making, brick kilns etc. The government has set up Child labor act in 1986 and the Min age of employment set by govt of India is 14 yrs but this has not helped much in eliminating this problem.
Sharing one of my encounters on this topic, there is a small teashop outside my company where a lady works. More than tea they mainly sell cigarettes, and other smoking stuff. I never paid attention to it until one day our senior took us there for a cup of tea. I saw the 5-6 yr old daughter of the lady standing with her. I thought maybe the lady doesn’t know about the free education scheme for children and thought of telling her about it. I asked the little girl’s name, trying to make a conversation. She was very shy and looked away. A group of men came there, brought cigarettes and started smoking. It was hard to stand there with so much smoke around me and I left for my office. While walking away I heard a senior manager (also smoking) asking for tea and then said he’ll only have it if the little girl makes it! Everyone agreed in unison and started motivating the girl to work. They had a pride in their voice like they are helping the girl by giving more preference to her work than other workers. Those were all educated professionals working at good positions. However, I believe they could have helped more had they motivated her to study Instead.
A child trusts their elders and is completely dependent on them. Let us not break their faith and give them the care they deserve.
Compiled by - Himanshi Sharma
