In India, a State Starts to Heed Child Labor Laws

by Satish KRT    February 11, 2008

Patna, Bihar--

Article 24 of  the Indian constitution  dealing with fundamental rights says that “No child below the age of  14-years shall be employed  to work in any factory or mine or be engaged in any hazardous employment.”

It also lays down penalties for employment of children in violation of provisions of this Act, and the other Acts which forbid the employment of children. But this provision remained ineffective and ideal for years. The Indian government found to their dismay that bringing in adequate legislature measures to curb child-labour may be easy but implementing them is somewhat a different and difficult task as it needs a strong will power from the state government to take steps towards it.

But it‘s great relief to see and find that the child-labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act is being implemented effectively in Bihar state. In fact, Bihar is the first state to recognize the need for the proper rehabilitation of rescued child-labour from the clutched of various employers and take proper and concrete steps in this direction. For this purpose a special task force at all district level has been formed for an effective implement ion of this Act.

Apart from necessary action for releasing and rehabilitation of child-laborers engaged in prohibitated employments, prosecutions have also been launched against the defaulter employers who were found to have engaged these children in contravention of child labour Act. For that matter those found guilty are charge-sheeted and forced to pay a penalty of Rs.20 thousand. This very amount is being utilized for rehabilitation of these children. Not only this, the children rescued from labour are being taken to care home or restore them to their respective families.

Certainly these all out efforts of Bihar government to make Patna, the capital city of state, a child labour free city by March 2008 are really very laudable.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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