Penalty for hiring child labourers

In the export of woollen and cotton rugs and carpets, Mirzapur and Agra, stand out as the largest exporters in the country.

But lately, the carpet export of these towns, especially Mirzapur, has suffered significantly due to the strong measures taken by the European Union and the United States against buying products manufactured in factories employing child labourers.

This has given the state a negative reputation of employing maximum number of child labourers in the country.

Taking strong measures against the employment of child labourers in the carpet, shoe and glass industries and other small scale industrial units, the Uttar Pradesh government has decided to start a state-wide 'rescue and rehabilitate' programme and impose heavy penalties on such industrial units to dissuade them from re-employing children.

Uttar Pradesh Labour Commissioner Sharda Prasad said so far the state had rescued about 150,000 child labourers from industrial units, including a large number of carpet factories.

He said while these children were now being rehabilitated, the industrial units, employing them, had been penalised with a fine of Rs 310 million, out of which, Rs 12.5 million had already been recovered and the state revenue department had issued notices to the remaining defaulters to pay up the fine without delay.

According to Prasad, the amount collected from the factories will be used to develop a "Bal Shramik Kalyaan Fund" at district level which in turn, will finance the 1849 special 'Bal Shramik Vidyalayas', established by the government.

In Agra alone, he said, there were 40 such special schools active in the district while throughout the state, a project worth Rs 240 million had been designed to establish more such schools in 47 more districts.

He added 92,500 child labourers had been admitted into the special schools while their families were compensated for the income loss by providing employment to the adult member of the family through a social security scheme.