After going down more than 20 meters down into dark, damp trenches, Indian child miners in the state of Meghalaya slide into extremely narrow horizontal tunnels, crawl many meters through the mud, and begin their day digging coal. They tie rags to their heads to hold their flashlights and cover their ears with cloth. Boots, helmets and safety tools are nowhere to be seen.
Approximately 400 million children work in slave-like conditions in the world. To celebrate the World Day Against Child Labor on 16 April, many organizations have reiterated their plea not to forsake exploited children. In India, working children from the age of five can be found in shops, farms, factories, construction sites and private households. At times, they risk their lives to help support their families.
In contrast to the 2010 Act that requires all children between six and fourteen to attend school, UNICEF states that there are about 28 million child laborers in India. The international call is for the government to urgently pass another law to ban all forms of child labor, but even activists agree that the laws can do little to solve one of the most serious problems in India.
“We have very good laws in this country”, says a child protection specialist for UNICEF. "The problem is in the way we enforce them.” Furthermore, although the Indian Mines Act prohibits anyone under 18 to work in them, the parents of child miners say that “Our children must work. Nobody is going to give money to us”.
In 2010, the NGO Impulse reported that nearly 70,000 children were working in about 5,000 mines. A young worker claims to have seen some of his co-workers die, and that despite having seriously hurt himself once, he had to work the next day. “How can we stop working? We have to eat”, he said. The contradiction is obvious: even if the laws banning child labor are enforced, poor parents make their children bear some of the responsibility of supporting the family out of need. This need, however, is not always extreme.
Through our work as an NGO, we see that this pattern can be challenged by raising awareness among parents about the importance of education. Once it has been raised, services, tools and training must be provided so that parents will allow their children to enjoy their childhood and be schooled so they can increase their chances of escaping the ignorance-poverty circle.
Sources: guioteca / 20minutos
