Church groups in India have collaborated with government agencies and employed other strategies to combat child labor in the country.
India has the world´s largest number of working children below 14 years old. To mark the annual World Day Against Child Labor, as the International Labor Organization has designated June 12, government and voluntary groups organized nationwide seminars and rallies.
Students from several Mangalore schools, some managed by the Church, took oaths to press their families and society not to employ children.
However, most programs highlighted the failure of laws to curb child labor. The country banned children from hazardous factories in 1986, and 20 years later extended the ban to homes and the hospitality sector.
Still, activists claim child labor is increasing throughout India. They say the problem will persist until the government implements laws strictly and prosecutes violators.
Jesuit Father Placido Fonseca, who directs Snehasadan (abode of love), a home for street children in Mumbai, acknowledges that eliminating child labor is not easy. Many parents bank on children to supplement family income, he told UCA News. Children provide "the cheapest work force" and cannot unionize to demand fair wages.
Mumbai (formerly Bombay), 1,410 kilometers southwest of New Delhi, is India´s commercial hub and the capital of Maharashtra state.
Salesian Father Godfrey D´Sa, director of Bal Prafulta (home of child abundance) in the city, describes child labor as "a vicious circle" involving poor parents, agents and employers. The way to end this, the priest suggested, is to give parents jobs that pay at least minimum wage.
Both Church-run centers help police rescue child workers in Mumbai.
Bal Prafulta is a member of the Maharashtra government´s task force for child labor. It assisted police and government officials in 18 raids in the past three years, rescuing 3,500 illegally employed children around the city.
Recently it rescued 30 children and sent them to government rehabilitation homes. They are kept in government homes until parents are traced, Father D´Sa explained.
Church groups in Karnataka state, Maharashtra´s southern neighbor, do similar work.
Empowerment of Children Human Rights Organization (ECHO), established by Norbertine priests, runs a preschool for rescued child laborers in Bangalore, the state capital, 1,000 kilometers southeast of Mumbai. Its director, Father Anthony Sebastian, told UCA News June 11 that ECHO has launched three projects for child workers this month. Two are in Bangalore and the third is in Mysore, 140 kilometers away.
Father Sebastian, the first Catholic priest appointed a judge on the state´s Juvenile Justice Board, has tried to speed up cases involving children. His efforts were boosted when the National Human Rights Commission intervened after 48 children escaped recently from the state remand home. Several children were kept in the home for years without trial, he said.
A Salesian program rehabilitates about 1,000 rescued children every year. Bangalore Oniyavara Seva Cootta (BOSCO, Bangalore economically backward people´s service society) has six centers in the city and more than 80 workers. BOSCO coordinator Mohamed Ismail told UCA News it trains rescued children in various skills, finds them jobs or settles them in families.
Bettiah diocese in Bihar, eastern India, has contained child labor to an extent, a Church official claims. The diocese has approximately 800 self-help groups with 25,000 women as members. These groups together deposited 10 million rupees (US $245,000) in savings during the past decade. Approximately 80 percent of the women borrow money from the deposits for small businesses.
James Seraphim, director of the diocesan social service center, told UCA News the women were informed last October that if they want to borrow money, they must stop sending children to work.
By January, this initiative had eradicated child labor among the women, he reported. "We do not claim we have eliminated child labor from our area of operations," Seraphim clarified.
Sacred Heart Sister Celestine, who works with the women, noted a new interest among them in sending children to school and monitoring government child-care centers.
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