Trafficked children toil in city’s factory units

JAIPUR : The Nobel Peace Prize for Kailash Satyarthi, a child rights activist, has put the limelight once again on the menace of child labour. Rajasthan, indeed, has a large number of child labourers with gems, polishing, hotels and restaurants industry pulling in hundreds of such children every month.
The Rajasthan Bal Adhikar Samrakshan Sajha Abhiyan (collective body of child rights NGOs) is working for child rights and engaged in rescuing children from labour with the help of law enforcement agencies.Satyarthi’s NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan has been actively participating in the rescue and rehabilitation of child labourers in Rajasthan.
In fact, Jaipur is the epicentre of child labour with over 800 children being rescued this year alone.
ActionAid, a human rights group, carried a study on 659 child labourers who were rescued from Jan 2013 to March 2014. The finding says that 85% comes from Bihar and 50 from Jharkhand and 32 from UP. Surprisingly, the number from Rajasthan is negligible. These children were mostly in the age group of 7 to 17 years. By the time they were rescued, most of them had spent an average of 4.5 years working in inhuman conditions.