‘Employment to parents can stop child labour problem in State’

BHUBANESWAR: “Employment to poor parents can stop child labour problem in the State,” said Minister for Culture and Tourism Prafulla Samal while attending a State-level symposium on ‘World Day Against Child Labour’ organised by State Resource Centre (SRC) here on Tuesday.

Minister Samal said that most of the farmers in the State are marginal farmers, landless agricultural labourers who do not have any job except the Khariff season and rest of the year they face financial crisis for which reason the parents send their children to work outside to run their family. Some of the poor parents migrate to other States or countries in search of job and that time they take their children with them instead of sending their children to school and they engage them in the work in due course of time, the Minister added.

Samal said that 45 per cent of the child labourers belong to rural area and out of which 85 per cent child labourers are from tribal areas. To solve this problem the standard of the poor families should be increased and then they would stop sending their children to work outside as labourer, he added.

Gracing the occasion, Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL) State convener Sudhir Sabat said that there should be coordination between all departments and commissions who are working to abolish child labour in the district level. All the Acts and Schemes working for the child labour should be implemented properly, he added.

According to State labour commissioner Alekh Padhihary, 86,000 children were working in hazardous sector out of 4, 86,000 child labourers in the State. Last year, 1, 43,386 child labourers were estimated, he added.

At present National Child Labour Projects (NCLPs) are running in 24 districts to provide free education facility to the child labourers in the State. In these 24 districts, 574 schools are running with the student strength of 27,982. So far, 1, 23,899 students have been mainstreamed from the NCLP Schools, informed the members of SRC.      

The State-level symposium was supported by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Unicef and CACL to take the movement for protection of child rights ahead. Among others, Joint Labour Commissioner Louis Ekka, Unicef Odisha Chief Shairose Mawji, trade union leader Souribandhu Kar, activists across the State, NCLP school teachers and NGO officials were present.