Workers Resistance

Author: LABOUR ISSUE WATCH

  • India should ratify a domestic workers’ treaty

    MUMBAI: A global treaty for the protection of domestic workers came into effect on September 5, offering solace to a category of workers who have till now remained invisible under labour laws in most countries. The Domestic Workers Convention 2011 adopted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) sets minimum standards for domestic workers who undertake a slew of activities including cooking, cleaning, ironing clothes, caring for children, elderly or sick members in private households.
    It effectively entitles domestic workers to certain basic rights such as a weekly-off for at least 24 hours, a minimum wage on par with a country’s laws as well as a minimum age bar before entry into the profession.
    India has in recent times taken baby steps in acknowledging domestic help as ‘workers’, but is yet to ratify the treaty or adopt holistic protection to this workforce. In 2012, India extended the benefits of a government health insurance scheme to domestic workers, even as a bill pending in the Rajya Sabha seeks to protect them against sexual harassment.
    “Domestic workers are among the most abused and exploited workers in the world,” said Gauri van Gulik, women’s rights advocate at Human Rights Watch in a press note, adding that the coming into effect of the Domestic Workers Convention offers millions of women and girls a chance for safer working conditions and better lives.
    The ILO estimates that there are currently there are at least 53 million domestic workers worldwide, not including child domestic workers, but only eight countries have ratified the convention till date. As the world’s largest democracy, India should lead the way in paving the way for change.
    Source: Times of India

  • Parliament passes bill to prohibit employment of manual scavengers

    A bill seeking to prohibit employment of individuals as manual scavengers by prescribing stringent punishment, including imprisonment up to five years, to those employing such labour was passed by Parliament on Saturday.

    The bill has provisions for providing for rehabilitation of manual scavengers and their family members as well.


    It has a wider scope for higher penalties than the 1993 Act. Offences under the Bill shall be cognisable and non-bailable and may be tried summarily. The penalty could be up to five years imprisonment.


    The bill, which had got a strong push from Congress President Sonia Gandhi and seeks to wipe out this “social stigma” by arranging for alternative jobs and providing other provisions to those in such work and their families got the unanimous approval of Rajya Sabha today.


    Lok Sabha had passed the bill on Friday.


    Moving the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2013 in the Rajya Sabha, Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Kumari Selja said the new bill had to be brought in as the earlier Act did not prove very effective.


    Under the new law, each occupier of insanitary latrines shall be responsible for converting or demolishing the latrine at his own cost. If he fails to do so, the local authority shall convert the latrine and recover the cost from him.


    Each local authority, cantonment board and railway authority is responsible for surveying insanitary latrines within its jurisdiction. They shall also construct a number of sanitary community latrines.


    “Such latrines, where manual scavenging happens, will have to be demolished, otherwise somebody will be engaged to do it,” Selja said, adding government will chip in with financial help.


    Members from Left parties including D Raja (CPI) moved a number of amendments to the bill, which were negated and the bill was passed unanimously.


    The minister said the Bill aims to provide for prohibition of employment as manual scavengers, rehabilitation of those involved in this work and their families.


    “The bill has penal provisions for those, who engage the manual scavengers,” she said, adding elimination of dry latrines and insanitary latrines are on high priority for the government.


    Despite prohibition of manual scavenging, the practice is still prevalent. These evils are inconsistent with the right to live with dignity, she said.


    “This dehumanising practice is inconsistent with the right to live with dignity,” Selja said, adding a need was felt for a stringent law.


    “We want to remove the stigma and blot on the society,” she said, calling for a “change of mindset” to end the menace.


    Selja also expressed the hope that a strong law would also help erase the practice from the society.


    Referring to the continuance of this practice, she said all states were in “denial mode” and had earlier stated that this practice did not exist in their areas.


    “When we are not ready even to accept that this practice exists, how can we remove this,” Selja posed.


    When Selja credited the Congress President for the passage of the bill, a BJP member remarked that they fail to understand that when Manmohan Singh is the Prime Minister of the country, how everything is being done by Sonia Gandhi.


    D Raja (CPI) moved a large number of amendments prompting Deputy Chairman P J Kurien to comment, “Raja is not at all kind even to me. Raja is moving every amendment.”


    Kurien’s comments came as the amendments moved by Raja took a lot of time when House was preparing to wind up.


    Participating in the discussion, Thaawar Chand Gehlot (BJP) asked the government to provide health insurance to manual scavengers and ensure alternative jobs.


    T N Seema (CPI-M) said 53 per cent of the country’s population does not have toilets and this bill does not give financial support to states to implement the provisions of the bill.


    Vasanthi Stanley (DMK) recalled the incidents like Delhi rape case to highlight the “untold miseries” of women and said that by engaging women in manual scavenging, we are “violating their self respect”.


    Expressing disgust over the practice, Raja said “we should render a national apology” for allowing this practice to continue. He demanded that the government should earmark a financial provision of Rs.1 lakh for each scavenger andRs.5 lakh for his family’s rehabilitation.


    “Prime Minister should announce a special package to end the practice,” he said.


    Ram Vilas Paswan (LJP) demanded proper training for manual scavengers for alternative work and said the sanitation staff working in Parliament, who are part-time workers, should be made permanent.


    Janaradan Waghmare (NCP) described manual scavenging as a “blot on society”.


    Ravishankar Prasad (BJP) said government should consider pension for old manual scavengers and demanded steps to end the practice of open defecation in states like Bihar and UP.


    D Bandopadhyaye (TMC), D P Singh Baghel (BSP), Shashi Bhushan Behera (BJD) also spoke.
    Source: India Today

  • Special Victims: Law, Order and India’s Children

    “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”, said Nelson Mandela. If that’s true, India needs to do some urgent soul searching.

    Nowhere is our attitude to children better reflected than in the way our systems of law and order treat them. 63 years after our Constitution recognised them as equal citizens, 39 years after we adopted our first National Policy for Children and 21 years after we ratified the UN Child Rights Convention (CRC), we have yet to agree on a uniform definition of who exactly is a child. Definitions vary depending on whether it’s marriage, work, education, sexual offences, culpability for crimes, adoption or inheritance that’s at issue.

    Few children of the elite or the middle-class in India have the opportunity to interact officially with the police, the judiciary or the alphabet soup of entities labelled CWC, JAPU, AHTU, JJB, NCLP, CARA, SFCAC, SCPS or NCPCR For the estimated 176 million children who are homeless, orphaned, abandoned, abused, trafficked, bonded, illegally employed, lost, refugees, displaced, accused of a crime or simply poor, on the other hand, the forces of law and order are omnipresent determinants of their fates.

    In 2012, CHILDLINE rescued 33,512 children in distress and accompanied them through a process of assessing their situations, exploring options and finding resolution. Most Indian children in need of care and protection, or those in conflict with the law, do not enjoy such a buffer from the vagaries and callousness of the system. Too many are buffeted from exploitation to abuse by officials who view the children under their charge as either, feral beings or powerless victims, and their own roles as either sinecures or chores.

    Combine the government’s own acknowledgement of 592 child deaths in juvenile facilities between 2006 and early 2010 with the 2011 report from the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) that lists 15 cases of illegal detention or torture, 17 cases of child rape and 21 cases of physical or sexual abuse of children in juvenile facilities that year alone. Add the 39 cases of sexual abuse in juvenile homes documented in the 2013 ACHR report and those reported by Human Rights Watch and others to get a glimpse of the tip of a gruesome iceberg of atrocities. Too many of those sworn to uphold the progressive values of India’s constitution, the UN CRC and hundreds of laws enacted to protect children from abuse, exploitation, neglect and exclusion, are among their worst violators.

    Too many of our policemen and women, those who serve on committees, boards and task forces charged with determining children’s fates, and those who run juvenile facilities are underpaid, ill-trained, overburdened individuals who are themselves subjected daily to the arbitrary feudalism that pervades Indian bureaucracy. With impunity for crimes against children the norm, negligible access, and the demographics of the children involved, it isn’t hard to fathom why these children will, more often than not, be meted out indignity, insult, callousness and abuse.

    It’s hardly surprising then that many children prefer the risks of life on the street over the supposed care of a home or shelter. Or that even caring adults hesitate to report abuse. Children with disabilities, those with HIV/AIDS and those who have been prostituted or trafficked face particular horrors. Very few institutions will even accept them. CHILDLINE staff members spend many days and nights running from facility to facility begging that these children be housed. All these pale into insignificance, however, in comparison with the atrocities faced by children growing up in those parts of our country we designate as disturbed areas. Here we grant our security forces untrammelled authority to abuse, rape, abduct, incarcerate, torture and murder. For them, and for the armed groups whose writ runs in these areas, children are easy targets. When children disappear in Manipur, Kashmir or other states with ongoing insurgencies, one can only speculate what fate has befallen them. Abducted by insurgents? Turned into child soldiers? Raped or murdered by our armed forces or by militants? Languishing in a prison? Run away to escape abuse or find work? It seems that no one has the responsibility to investigate or report on those we consider dispensable collateral damage in our internal wars.

    At the other end of the spectrum are judges, politicians and bureaucrats who see children as hapless objects of charity who must settle for the crumbs of justice and rights we adults deem appropriate. How else do we explain the continuing exclusion of children of various age groups from coverage under the right to education and the child labour acts? Or the grand total of 1297 prosecutions through 19 years of the PNDT (Pre-Natal Diagnostic Testing) Act? Or the fact that over 3 million inspections by the Labour Department resulted in just 2,16,037 prosecutions and only 23,223 convictions for child labour?  This while the government acknowledges that at least 12 million children aged 5-14 years are illegally employed and that a further 75 million are neither employed nor in school. Why were only some 38,000 crimes against children (including foeticide, infanticide, child marriage and child labour) registered at all in 2012 when over 50% of India’s children are estimated to experience abuse and the ratio of girl to boy children declines with each measurement?  Explain the peculiar exclusion of boys aged 16-18 years from both, the new law against rape as well as the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) even as the clamour grows to relax the age limit to permit their prosecution as adults. Or the fact that India spends a meagre 0.04% of its national budget on protecting our children and that even these inadequate budgets have been slashed citing failure to expend them. Or indeed the fact that the Census of India still doesn’t enumerate children by the CRC definition. Or that every right for children – survival, development and protection – has taken decades to pass through our legislative machinery and then been, at best, partially granted. Or that, when last reported in 2010, a grand total of 2.57% of questions raised in Parliament pertained to children.

    Is there reason to hope amidst this pervasive gloom? Decades of advocacy by committed campaigners and support from activist judges have finally enacted many of the laws our children deserve. Activists, NGOs and committed bureaucrats are slowly but surely activating the comprehensive system envisioned under the Integrated Child Protection Scheme and seeking redress under the new Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. The laws on child labour are up for further amendment. An ambitious database to track all children missing, progressing through the judicial system, or in care, is under way. The rights to education, work and food, despite their lacunae, are helping to alleviate the desperation that is at the root of so many of these problems. The right to information is permitting increased scrutiny of every element of the system. New communication channels and technologies are helping to amplify hitherto silenced voices. Small armies of social workers and volunteers are working with children, communities and authorities to build awareness of their rights and of the laws meant to protect them. Children, parents, teachers, doctors, social workers and others are responding. Phone calls to CHILDLINE’s 24/7 emergency 1098 number are up. In 2012 we took over 4 million calls. Beyond immediate rescue and relief, CHILDLINE, despite being desperately under-resourced, is working with each statutory body to catalyse sustained action and with legislators to strengthen laws and policies. Across 291 districts and towns and in state and national capitals we keep the focus on children in situations where hardly any other entity makes them a priority. Over the next few years we’ll expand to cover every district and town in India. Three key elements are still missing.

    Investment on the scale necessary for adequate infrastructure, staffing, training and monitoring.
    The will to enforce laws and implement policies.
    Finally, adequate accountability mechanisms to monitor, report and ensure performance.

    We know from recent experience that only concerted action from citizens can change these grim realities. You and I determine the significance of child protection on our national agenda. We can choose action over apathy, determination over cynicism and compassion over indifference. Our most vulnerable citizens need us to urgently search our souls.
    Source: http://zeenews.india.com/bbv/special-victims-law-order-and-india-s-children_870530.html

  • Wazirpur hot-rolling steel plant workers call off strike

    Monthly wages for all workers will be increased by Rs.1,500 from April 16
    Hot-rolling steel plant workers at Wazirpur Industrial Estate and factory owners have called a truce. An estimated 500 workers who have been on strike since April 11 rejoined work on Wednesday.
    The owners have agreed to provide ESI cards to all the workers which will help address their medical care issues and expenses. The monthly wages for all the workers will be increased by Rs.1,500 from April 16 onwards. Out of the six days that the strike lasted, the workers will be paid wages for four days by factory owners. None of the striking workers will be sacked by the factory owners.
    A Labour Inspector visited the 24 hot-rolling factories on Wednesday and asked the workers, who submitted complaints to the Labour Department, to appear before him on April 29.
    The workers had embarked on the strike from April 11 demanding payment of statutory minimum wages, eight-hour shifts, ESI and PF facilities, yearly-bonus, and extra payment for overtime work.

    They had formed an organisation–Garam Rola Mazdoor Ekta Samiti–to protest the violation of labour laws in their plants. On Tuesday evening, some of the workers were detained by Ashok Vihar police and allowed to leave after a few hours.

    The Samiti has formed an executive committee to raise the flouting of labour laws before various official fora like the Delhi Labour Department, Factory Inspectorate and Union Labour Ministry.
    Raghuraj, the leader of the workers, while expressing disappointment that some of the demands for which the strike was undertaken could not be met, expressed optimism about the way ahead. He said the workers would put up a united front if attempts to coerce them by using the threat of police action are made.

    “We are not stepping back from our core demands like minimum wages, social security benefits and better working conditions. We will highlight the violation of labour laws before government bodies. It is our expectation that factory owners will voluntarily provide us all the benefits that have so fare been denied to us,” he said.

  • Workers steel for a better deal

    The Wazirpur Industrial Estate workers claim they have been exploited

    For several years, nearly 1,000 workers at 24 hot-rolling steel plants in the Wazirpur Industrial Estate worked 12-hour shifts under inhuman conditions. They toiled day-in and day-out, without a single day off. But then in February last year they went on strike and forced the factory owners to concede to a weekly holiday on Wednesdays.
    Since then, the workers have been demanding minimum wages, job cards certifying them as bona fide employees and enrolment in the Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) scheme which will provide them a measure of health care coverage.
    After their demands evinced no response, these workers banded together again this past Wednesday and struck work. 
    Labour officials meet striking workers at the Wazirpur Industrial Estate.
    With furnaces not firing at these hot-rolling factories – where iron blocks are converted into steel – hundreds of other factories in the area are also in danger of shutting down. The steel from the ancillary hot-rolling plants is the raw material used to manufacture steel utensils and other appliances. And the striking workers claim that stocks of raw steel are rapidly dwindling.
    Rajeshwar Singh, a mason, has worked in the hot-rolling plants for 10 years now. “While masons get Rs.8,500 monthly, helpers are paid Rs.6,000. We work 12 hours daily, but don’t get overtime wages. Yesterday, the proprietors tried to mollify us with a Rs.1,500 hike but that is still not at par with the minimum wages. When we take leave, we forego our pay,” rues Rajeshwar.
    The extreme heat spawned by the furnaces forces the workers to take half-hour breaks and makes them sickness-prone. “For every half-hour we work, we have to rest for 30-minutes to recoup our strength. Every worker drinks one bottle of water every hour. In the summer, it gets even worse,” says Babloo Prasad.
    On Monday, the workers staged a protest outside Deputy Labour Commissioner S. C. Yadav’s office at Nimri Colony in Ashok Vihar. Mr. Yadav has marked the workers’ complaints to a Labour Inspector to investigate. On Wednesday, labour officials will meet both workers and proprietors to chalk out a compromise.
    Mr. Yadav told the workers that his office can only take up their denial of minimum wage grievance. “For the absence of your name on muster rolls, you will have to complain to the Factory Inspectorate at 5 Shamnath Marg. For the failure to be enrolled in the ESI scheme, the complaint rests with the Central Government under which the ESI Corporation comes,” he told them.
    The protesters claim that each hot-rolling plant has between 30 and 40 workers. The Factories Act defines a factory as a unit which has 10 employees working with the aid of power, or 20 employees working without the aid of power.
    Community organiser Raghuraj and the workers he has helped band together have a tough choice to make in the days ahead – the lengthy bureaucratic process of filing complaints, waiting for an inquiry and official action, or the difficult and uncertain path of pressuring owners to concede to their demands by continuing the strike.
    With the shadow of police action hovering over them, Rajeshwar says: “We are not scared of anyone anymore. We have been exploited for far too long.” 
    Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/workers-steel-for-a-better-deal/article4622743.ece

  • Two bonded child labourers rescued

    Child helpline rescues; police arrest one accused

    Two bonded child labourers were rescued by the District Child helpline and handed over to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC). Police arrested M. Ariamuthu (48), who had ‘bought’ the two boys to work as goatherds for three years.
    The boys were forced to drop out of school and were working as goatherds with Ariamuthu, who owned about 500 goats, a year and a half, when one of them escaped and arrived here on March 26.
    Ariamuthu, who hails from Mariyur village in Kadaladi block, was arrested under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, read with Section 16 of the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act, 1976. He was produced before a magistrate court and remanded in judicial custody, police said.
    Police said the 12-year-old boy Vinoth Kumar was wandering around the new bus stand on the night of March 26, when he was rescued by Child Helpline service officials. The boy told the officials that he had escaped from Thozhuvooranai, about 12 kms from here, where he was herding goats.
    On information provided by him, the officials, with the help of police, rescued another boy, Muthu (13), hailing from Puravikadu in Thanjavur district. District Child Welfare Committee (CWC) Chairperson R. Sakunthala told The Hindu that CWC has taken custody of the two boys and admitted them at a home here.
    As both the boys were interested in pursuing their studies, the CWC will make arrangements to admit them in schools in the coming academic year, she said. Vinoth Kumar is a 4 standard dropout and Muthu, dropped out after 6 standard.
    Vinoth Kumar, who is an orphan, said he and his elder brother were sold for Rs 55,000 to Ariamuthu by their relatives to raise money for the marriage of their sister. She got married two years ago and it appears to be a child marriage, Ms Sakunthala said.
    Efforts are on to trace his elder brother Ajith Kumar (16), who is working as a bonded labourer near Erwadi. Their two younger brothers are presently with their grandmother. The CWC will provide them care after obtaining custody of the boys, she said.
    Source:http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/two-bonded-child-labourers-rescued/article4564091.ece

  • Loading the dice against workers

    The resistance of workers and trade unions to pension “reforms” rests on their contention that they are aimed at transferring the responsibility of social security from the government to the market.
    At the heart of the issue is the National Pension System (NPS), the new over-arching framework for the new pension regime that, since 2010, also includes the Swavalamban scheme for the vast mass of unorganised workers.

    Redefining social security

    Ever since the National Democratic Alliance government initiated the “reforms” in the pension sector, the trade unions have taken exception to two key aspects of the new regime, which is being steered by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).
    The first — and perhaps most contentious issue — pertains to the very nature of what a pension is.
    The unions regard the new system as one that marks a fundamental shift from a “defined benefit” system to a “contributory” scheme.
    Traditionally, pensions in India were based on a system in which the worker could predict with a fair degree of accuracy his/her income stream upon retirement. Both contributions and the monthly income streams were usually defined as a fraction of the workers’ salary under the “defined benefit” system.
    The unions argue that the changeover to a “defined contribution” system is not merely a shift in the methodology used to calculate pensions but is philosophically grounded in the notion that the markets — not the government — ought to serve as the vehicle for the delivery of this important social security benefit.
    They point to Supreme Court rulings, which stated that pensions were not a bounty; that they are a reward for services rendered by a worker during his productive span; and that they are an instrument of social welfare and social justice, a worthy objective even if only a small fraction of the Indian workers had access to it.

    Market fundamentalism

    The second issue, which pertains to the government’s ‘abdication’ of its responsibility to the working class, is the push of pension funds governed by the PFRDA to a market-based system, says S. Prasanna Kumar, general secretary, Karnataka State Committee of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). Workers who need to make a mandatory contribution of 10 per cent of their salary to their own pensions are at the mercy of fund managers, many of them in the private sector, he observes.
    The immediate implication of a market-based approach, which the Left alleges is based on a Working Paper on pensions published by the International Monetary Fund more than a decade ago, is that workers no longer have a clear visibility of their likely income stream after they retire.

    Tales of scam

    Mr. Prasanna Kumar points out that the many tales of pension scams from across the world — from the advanced countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom to developing countries such as Chile and Argentina, which embraced market-based pension ‘reforms’ — do not inspire confidence that workers’ contributions will either be safe or yield a “decent return at the end of their long working life.”
    “The logic that workers’ long-term committed contributions cannot be entitled to any kind of assured returns is based on market fundamentalism,” he argues. This strict no-no arises from the logic of not only delinking the government from a critical component of social security, but is premised on the misplaced but abiding faith in markets.

    Unfair to workers

    Even if the notion that pensions are part of a government’s larger social objective is jettisoned, the new system is unfair even in purely financial terms because it fails to balance the interests of the workers with those who manage the pensions. Critics of the NPS argue that while workers are mandatorily required to commit savings throughout their working life, the managers are not obliged to guarantee anything in return. This implies that the workers bear the burden of uncertain returns.
    Trade unions argue that Swavalamban could derail quickly for the same reason. The PFRDA prescribes several user fees and charges, which are expected to account for a significant proportion of the workers’ contribution, even under Swavalamban, which is specifically targeted at the weakest segment of the working class.
    These fund managers are expected to function like Mutual Funds, which in India have demonstrated a high mortality rate. No wonder, the trade unions even have their own description for the NPS: the National Pauperisation Scheme.
    Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/loading-the-dice-against-workers/article4564924.ece

  • ‘Streamline the functioning of workers’ welfare board’

    Tamil Nadu AITUC Construction Workers Union has urged the State government to streamline the functioning of the Tamil Nadu Construction and Unorganised Sector Workers Welfare Board in the interest of workers.
    The activities of the board have come to a standstill. This was brought to the notice of the government on several occasions by the trade unions, but there is no tangible improvement in the functioning of the board, a press statement of K. Suresh, district president of the union, issued here on Saturday said.
    A large number of petitions seeking accident relief, delivery, marriage assistance, and pension are pending with the board for a long time. The unions have been demanding the board not to insist on the physical presence of the workers at the time of enrolment with the board. Giving scant respect to this demand, the board has directed the workers to appear in person for renewing their enrolment, he alleged and demanded the government to concede to their demands.
    Source :http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Tiruchirapalli/streamline-the-functioning-of-workers-welfare-board/article4566897.ece

  • India has too many labour regulations: Rajan

    NEW DELHI, MARCH 15:  
    India has the least number of workers protected under law in the world even as the country’s labour market has too many regulations, Raghuram Rajan, Chief Economic Adviser in the Finance Ministry, said today.
    “India’s labour market is over regulated … One of the features of the Indian labour market is that it gets the strongest protection under law. But if you look at workers’ protection in India compared to world, we have the least number of workers protected,” Rajan said while addressing the India Today Conclave here.
    “We have too much regulation, we have too many regulations at the wrong time, sometimes little less regulation at the right time. We need to figure out what we need and pick out what we don’t need,” he added.
    Labour reforms have been pending in India for long.
    Amendments to various labour laws have been awaiting Parliamentary approval.
    Rajan also emphasised careful implementation of the Government’s welfare programmes.
    “The Government’s subsidies have to be carefully targeted, and subsidy programmes have to be efficient, we as a poor country, cannot afford a poorly targeted or inefficient welfare programme,” he said.
    On growth and equity, Rajan said, “We currently have programmes such as food, education health and pensions but the key question is, how much should we do, who should be target.”
    Rajan, a former chief economist of IMF, predicted that the welfare state in Europe and the US is unsustainable. Source: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com

  • High court seeks report on child labour, missing children

    NEW DELHI: Taking a serious view of the problem of missing children and child labour in the capital, the Delhi high court on Wednesday sought a comprehensive report from the state government and Delhi Police.

    A division bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice V K Jain ordered the authorities to give details of how many child labourers were rescued and action taken against employers since 2009 when it first took suo moto cognizance of the issue. 

    HC gave time till May 1 for a comprehensive report on a PIL filed by Save the Childhood Foundation, an NGO, seeking elimination of child labour from the capital. 

    “How many raids have you conducted, how many children were rescued, what action you have taken to prosecute the employers and what steps have been taken to rehabilitate the children since 2009,” the bench demanded, wondering why just 74 raids were conducted during two years in which 900 children were rescued. 

    The petitioner’s counsel Prabhashay Kaur highlighted that the labour department has failed to comply with the directions passed by HC in 2009 to rescue the child labourers and rehabilitate them as per the action plan formulated by a committee comprising officers from various departments. 

    Referring to a report filed by the labour department, Kaur said the court had earlier directed to rescue 500 children per month but as per the report, only 682 children were rescued last year.