What are the measures to eradicate child labour explain?
1. Poverty Alleviation
Poverty is one of the root cause of child labour. The government should start various poverty alleviation programmes and implement them in reality. Infact the government has started various poverty alleviation programmes but due to problems like corruption these programmes remain only on paper. They do not reach to the poor man at all.
2. Free Education
The poor and the orphaned children should be provided with facilities like free education along with free clothing, housing and also their need for food should be looked after. These facilities should be provided at the taluka and the district levels.
3. Generation of Interest in Education
The drop-out rates in India are extremely high especially in the rural areas. In order to reduce this drop-out rates it is extremely important to develop interest of children in their study. If they are regular in school, then they would not fail in the exams and they will not move towards employment.
4. Availability of Jobs
The poor children should be provided with jobs along with education through schemes like ‘Earn and Learn’. This scheme should be implemented everywhere in the country. The school education should be based on vocational guidance itself. This will help to develop a kind of self respect amongst the child labourers.
5. Adult Education
Illiterate parents are the cause of child labour. Hence adult education should be provided to the poor illiterate parents. This will help them to understand the importance of education and they will encourage their children too to take education.
6. Social Awareness
This is the need of the hour today. The social workers should visit the slums in the cities and the rural areas and generate awareness about the importance of education in children and how child labour is harmful for the child. They should make the people aware about the future of the child and they should try to develop trust amongst the parents.
7. Freedom from Bonded Labour
The laws related to bonded labour system should be made more stringent and should be strictly implemented. Children should be made free from bonded labour.
8. Change in the Survey Method
When the employers come to know that the government has started taking child labour census or survey, they give leave to the child labourers from work. Hence we do not have proper statistics of child labourers in India. For this, the survey method itself should be changed. If this work is done by the National Social Service institutes or the Post Graduate level students then the real statistics will be known to all.
9. Efforts taken by the Government
Child Labour Cell was set up by the government and it performs the following functions like
- Formulating and implementing policies and programmes for solving the problem of child lanour.
- To monitor projects like the NCLP(National Child Labour Projects).
- To render financial assistance to voluntary organizations for taking up action oriented projects for child labour.
- To monitor and enforce the Child Labour (Protection and Regulation)Act, 1986.
- To organize various workshops and seminars for generating awareness about child labour.
National Child Labour Project was set up in the areas of high concentration of child labour for their identification, withdrawl and elimination. The package of benefits to child labour for their rehabilitation includes formal or non-formal education, vocational training, nutrition, health care, stipend. About 500 such projects are taken up in the country to identify and rehabilitate child workers.
Indo-US Dollar Matching Grant is a joint project undertaken by US Ministry of Labour and the Indian Ministry of Labour in 2000 to completely eliminate child labour from identified hazardous industries in identified districts. It was launched in 2004. Under this project the US Government would provide 20 million US Dollars and an equal amount has contributed by the Government of India.
10. Role of NGO’s
A number of non-governmental organizations are working for the benefit of the child labourers. CRY(Child Relief and You), SEVA, ANKUR, PRABHA-TARA, ICCW, BUTTERFLIES etc are some of the NGO’s working in this direction. They organize various plans and programmes to eliminate the problem of child labour.