The
Asian age, New Delhi
July 19, 1998
40
Children rescued from bonded labour
By
Elisa Patnaik
CRY FREEDOM
New
Delhi: Ten-year-old
Narad couldn't sit for a moment without falling asleep on the
shoulders of his friends. Suffering from high fever, he perhaps
did not even comprehend why he was being presented at a press
conference. What he only remembered were the harsh conditions
in which his little hands would weave carpets 15 hours a day and
the torture meted out to him as a bonded child labourer in an
obscure village in Uttar Pradesh.
Narad
is among the 40 children who were freed from bondage in a district
in Allahabad on July 15, 1998 by the Bandhua Mukti Morcha, a non-governmental
organisation. Thirty five of them were from Bihar.
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Two
months back, Narad, who worked in a carpet factory at Handra
Block, Uttar Pradesh was hung from the trunk of a neem tree
and hit with a brick, for being slow at weaving carpets.
His clothes were torn and horrified by the incident he defecated.
Panic
stricken, six children from the unit including Narad escaped
to another village only to be caught by the owner of the
loom.
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Four of them were brought back and beaten mercilessly. Thirteen-year-old
Raj Kumar, the eldest of them, was also hung from a tree and thrashed
by an iron rod.
Acting
on an up-off the BMM organised raids in the carpet weaving units
at 'Handia' on July 15, 1998 with the help of the local administration
and the police and rescued 40 children from the infamous carpet
belt of Allahabad, Varanasi-Mirzapur.
The parents of these children were lured by the local agents with
the promise that the children would earn good wages after being
trained in the carpet factories and so were paid measly amounts
as advance money. They were brought to the area one and a half
years back and were handed over to the loom owner.
Four
of the children present there, Pagun Vishwanath Narad, and Raj
Kumar all below 13 years, said they were forced to live in subhuman
conditions. They said that they worked from 6 am. to 9 p.m.
with short breaks for lunch and dinner which comprised of only
rice and dal. They were given only a limited quantity of food
and were not given any wages either, they said.
At
nights they were locked from outside and made to sleep on gunny
bags spread out on the floor. For defecation in the morning they
were accompanied by a guard with a stick.
Parents could not visit them because they were not aware of the
whereabouts of these children.To
make them work for longer hours, the loom owner has got them addicted
to Surti (a combination of tobacco and limestone).
Refusing
the claims of the Central and the Uttar Pradesh governments that
the incidents of bonded child labour had come down to a negligible
level in the carpet industry, chairperson of BMM Swami Agnivesh
said "in the carpet industry alone, there are about 300,000
children labouring in hazardous conditions," The number of
children in bondage across the country is more than 65 million,
he added. 'The children were weaving carpets, making the Rugmark
labels which are supposedly certified as free of 'child labour.'
They
also met Union labour minister Saryanarain Jatiya' on Saturday.
Swami Agnivesh regretted that even the Supreme Court's December
10, 1996 judgement directing the states to nab guilty employers
and a fine of Rs. 25,000 for each released child to be deposited
in the child's account for his education, had not been implemented.
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