NEW DELHI: The Delhi government’s report on child labour rescue operations since 2009 reveals that joint operation teams in districts managed to free just about 4,132 children up to March this year in over 1,400 rescue missions. Non-governmental organizations put the number of child labourers in Delhi anywhere between a conservative 1 lakh and a board assessment of 5 lakh. Census 2001 had put the official figure at 41,000.
The government is still struggling to find ways to circumvent the laws that prevent access to children working as domestic workers in Delhi’s home. The labour department says rescue teams cannot enter homes without search warrants. Hence a crackdown on domestic child labour has failed to take off so far.
The data shows that employers prefer to engage small children. Of the 4,132 rescues, 2,530 were children below 14 years and 1,602 were above 14 years of age. There were only 332 cases of arrests and sealing of units. More worrisome is the fact that as many as 1,433 children below 14 were rescued from units where they were engaged in jobs classified as "prohibitory" due to their hazardous nature under the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act 1986. Some of the jobs listed as hazardous in the Act include factories of plastics, bidis, fire crackers, weaving, dyeing, carpet weaving, mines, plastic units, transport work and construction activity. Employment of children in dhabas, restaurants, hotels, tea shops, recreation centres and domestic work also comes under this category.
Rescue operations are based on tip-offs and it has to be ensured there is no information leak resulting in disappearance of children from the spot. Many a time, random raids cannot be carried out as children are packed off in crowded back-lanes and dingy rooms by employers.