Arrival of child workers in West Bengal from neighbouring states including Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha has emerged as a major problem in West Bengal, an expert said today.
Concentration of child labour is highest in North and South 24 Parganas, Malda, Jalpaiguri districts.
"Since these districts have several brick kilns, they attract migrant-child labourers from Jharkhand, Bihar and Odisha," State Programme Manager of 'Save the Children', Chittapriyo Sadhu said here today.
The brick kilns serve as a source of income for thousands of unskilled labourers from the neighbouring states who are recruited arbitrarily by local contractors encouraging exploitation of existing labour laws.
"They (children) come after the monsoon and stay here till May-June next year. During this period they have their schools closed.
"We have worked in 70 brick kilns in Malda and North 24 Parganas districts. In brick kilns you will not find a single child labour because there they are registered as adults.
These children help their families by carrying bricks and rolling the carts. For this they do not get wages but it goes to their families," Sadhu pointed out.
"We are trying to make them go the schools. In fact, we have even tried to take them go to local schools but language has always been a problem there," he said.
Incidentally, 'Save the Children' has been trying to create a communication between the West Bengal and Jharkhand governments to work out something in this connection.
"We are trying to create a communication between the two governments because this is growing as big problem. We have placed this in front of the government in different forums and have shared the data with the State Commission on the Protection of Child Rights also. There has been a discussion between the West Bengal and the Jharkhand government too," he said.
Talking about their suggestion regarding this issue, Sadhu said,"Our suggestion are those when the families are coming here to work they can keep their children at some hostel in their states managed by the government or an organisation. Or the children can be shifted to some mobile schools here temporarily. Actually, there are different models."
Currently, according to the 2011 Census, 3.2 per cent of the total population in the age group of 5- 14 years in West Bengal are child labourers, he said.
