Children toil as world observes Anti-Child Labour Day

This story was work over two days and was published on the eve of the Anti-Child Labour day, in the Hindustan Times, Bhopal edition in 2003. What I like about this story was I was able to free at least three children from their job and they were later admitted into a government run school by an NGO working for the welfare of the children in Bhopal.

Even as the whole world observed Anti Child Labour Day, 12-year-old Rashid toiled away in simmering afternoon heat to eke out a living by pushing a cart loaded with wood up a slope along with his father in the State capital’s walled city.
Like Rashid, there were hundreds of children who were seen doing all kinds of arduous jobs unaware that the world was observing a day to bring their childhood out of the clutches of drudgery and hard labour.
For Kamal, a daily wager at the sugar cane juice stall on Hamidia Road, it was sweating it out in the heat roiling his frail hands around ensuring that the last drop of cane juice drops into a vessel, while he gets paid a meager Rs 20 a day. Kamal contributes this amount to his mother’s kitty to keep the hearth warm.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there were an estimated 246 million child workers around the world aged between five and 17. One out of every two children aged between 6 and 14 has no access to primary education.
The ILO website also says that 14.4 per cent children in India, aged between 10 and 14, are engaged in labour.
But the statistics does not matter to 13-year old Amir Khan who helps his father at a road side show shop near the Lower Lake. If he does not help his father, his two brothers and a sister cannot go to school, he says.
Another 10-year old, selling locks at the bus stand says that he does not know the place of his birth and the names of his parents. He lives with a group of people who brought him up on the pavements of the Bus Stand.
Though India celebrates the Children’s Day on the birth anniversary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, little is being done for them, as the number of child labourers grows every year.
If the trend of child labour is not curbed, India soon will have the largest population of child labourers in the next five years.