Care & Concerns : Stop Child labour

Care & Concerns:

Nearly 85 per cent of child labourers
in India are hard-to-reach, invisible and excluded, as they work
largely in the unorganised sector, both rural and urban, within the
family or in household-based units, which are generally out of the
purview of labour laws.

Over the years the Government of India (GoI) has multiplied its
efforts to address the needs and rights of exploited children. The
largest and most structured intervention in the area of  child labour in
India is the National Child Labour Projects (NCLP). The programme,
addressing children rescued from hazardous labour and centrally managed
by the Ministry of Labour (MoL) includes the establishment of special
schools to provide children with the skills they need to be mainstreamed
into the formal system, vocational training, supplementary nutrition,
health services etc.

In January 2005, the National Child labour Projects scheme has been
expanded to 250 districts in 21 different Indian states, covering 42 per
cent of all districts of the country (2001 Census).

UNICEF uses the Article 32 of the Convention on Rights of the Child
(CRC) ,which articulates child labour as “any work that is likely to be
hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful
to the child’s health or physical, spiritual, moral or social
development”, as the foundation of its work in India.