New Delhi: A C Pandey, Joint Secretary (Child Labor) said that there is an urgent need of realignment of National Child Labor Projects (NCLP) scheme in the light of provisions of Right to Education (RTE) Act - 2009. As per sources, Mr Pandey has said this in a meeting of the Central Monitoring Committee on Child Labor which was held on September 20, 2010. He informed that International Labor Organization (ILO) has adopted a global report on the worst kind of child labor which says that all the countries in the world have to eliminate all child labor of the worst kind by 2016.
India, as part of the international commitment, has also to prepare a roadmap to abolish worst forms of child labor which includes bonded labor, hazardous work, drugs, prostitution and trafficking. The issue of child labor is gaining importance as certain international quarters are making efforts to connect child labor with trade. There is a need to put new and modified efforts to ensure that all states will take abundant precautions to wean away child labor from industries. Pandey said that the mid day meal scheme has been implemented in all the child labor projects.
In addition, P C Chaturvedi, Secretary (Labor & Employment), underlined the need of greater involvement of Panchayati Raj institutions. He said the involvement of Panchayati Raj institutions will certainly improve the quality, implementation and alignment of NCLP Scheme with Right to Education. He also highlights the need of greater involvement of State Governments in identification and implementation of the NCLP scheme to stop trafficking of children and the mainstreaming of children rescued from child labor.
The Secretary has asked the State Administrations to take necessary measures to abolish child labor from the respective states depending on the specific conditions of their states. He also said that in the light of the global commitment for elimination of child labor, they need to build a roadmap for elimination of worst form of child labor and for ratification of ILO Convention 182. However, presently they are not in a position to ratify ILO Convention 138 because it has a number of socio-economic connotations.
Moreover, he expressed concern at efforts by few countries in using child labor as a non-tariff barrier and mentioned that as per the ILO Social Justice Declaration 2008 the labor standards cannot be linked with trade. Under the project based plan of action, the government announced National Child Labor Programme in 1988 in 12 districts of high child labor concentration. The aim of the scheme is to recognize working children, withdraw them from work, and put them into special schools and to mainstream them into formal education.
As per sources, presently, the total number of districts sanctioned under this scheme is 271. The total number of districts currently under operation in this scheme is 267. Also, the total number of schools sanctioned in the scheme is 11056 out of which the total number of schools in operation is 8040. The total number of sanctioned strength of children is 5.52 lakhs and of the children enrolled is 4.02 lakhs. The number of children that have been mainstreamed so far is 6.47 lakhs.
