11 rescued child labourers placed under protection, rest returned to employers

EMPLOYERS TO CARE FOR RETURNED CHILDREN UNTIL PARENTS TAKE THEM BACK; CHILD WELFARE COMMITTEE TO TAKE CASE FURTHER
AMEET OBEROI
GANGTOK: “Out of the 42 children employed as domestic help in private homes rescued by the CID branch of Sikkim Police yesterday, 11 were found to be in need of urgent help and protection and have been placed at two protection homes,” informed DIG [Range], N Sridhar Rao. While six boys have been placed under the care of local NGO Subha Laxmi Organisation, the three girls have been kept at Mamtalaya, he informed.
The remaining 31 [14 of whom are above the age of 14] have been returned to their respective employers, who have signed an undertaking that the children will be provided access to basic education and also be given vocational training with all the expenses borne by the employers. The 17 under-aged children will stay with their employers until their parents arrive to take them home. This, the DIG explained was done because there were no short stay homes in the state to house them.
Out of the 42 children rescued yesterday, 23 are girls, all aged between 10 to 17 years. All the children were medically examined after they were rescued from residential areas of Development Area, Arithang, Sichey, Chandmari, Diesel Power House, Vajra and then handed over to the two NGO’s to be looked after. While three of the children were from Sikkim, the rest were brought from West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Dooars area, the DIG further informed.
“We had information that there was rampant abuse in certain areas of the capital, and even some NGO’s had made complaints regarding the matter alleging that some domestic helps had been physically abused and could also have been sexually harassed and so the decision to raid the areas was taken,” the DIG said.

Children at Work

Editorial:
Sunday was World Day Against Child Labour. An issue which was quite ‘popular’ in the NGO circuit and its circus of rallies and placards appears to have fallen off the priority list of public engagement. After the high of [appearing] to save under 14 years olds even from the servitude of domestic help, the law remains largely ignored, save the extremely rare occasion when some ‘rescues’ are made. The only real change which has transpired at the ground level is that all those ‘lost’ notices of domestic servants who have gone missing record their age as 14, conveniently matured to save the masters and mistresses from attracting legal action. What this makes amply clear is that awareness on child labour laws is universal. Unfortunately, so is the disregard for these rules, a disregard born not from an evil design to exploit children but from a nonchalance nurtured by a disinterest among the concerned agencies to enforce the rules and rescue children.