Success tale in state child labour fight
2 min readPatna: A total of 4,100 rescued child labourers have been registered with the child labour tracking system (CLTS), an innovative web-based system to register rescued child labourers and track their re-integration into the mainstream that was launched by chief minister Nitish Kumar in 2016.
On the eve of National Anti-Child Labour Day on Sunday, labour commissioner Gopal Meena said: “CLTS is an integrated web-based system and provides a platform to track individual children through the process of their rescue and registration, inquiry by Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to tailor the rehabilitation based on their social, economic and psychological background. One of the unique features of the CLTS system is generation of an entitlement card which fast-tracks availing of various government schemes to the child and her/his family. This ensures speedy rehabilitation and restoration.”
Meena further said: “The system allows bodies such as the district child protection unit to track progress and generate reports on a quarterly basis. Even if children are rescued from working as child labour, there is no guarantee that they would not be forced to work.”
“Details regarding the child labourer’s name, from where he/she was traced, his/her employer’s name, whether he/she has been admitted into school after being rescued, are fed into the software through which we are also able to keep a tab on the rehabilitation process of the child labourers. Of the 4,100 child labourers who have been registered with the CLTS, 1,454 kids’ bank accounts have already been linked to the Aadhaar card so that they can be directly given the benefits of various schemes. The state government provides Rs 25,000 from the chief minister’s relief fund to rescued child labourers’ accounts. Besides, there is also a scheme of the Union government as per which rescued bonded labourers’ families are also provided with Rs 20,000 immediately. The CLTS also keeps a tab on whether rescued labourers have got central scheme benefits or not,” added Meena.
As per the 2011 Census, Bihar is the second state with the maximum child workers. It accounts for 10.7 per cent of the child workers in the country in the age group of five to 14 years as per the Census. There are 4.5 lakh children in the five-14-years age group falling in the category of main workers and about 6.3 lakh children in the category of marginal workers. While main workers work for six months or more in a year, marginal workers are those who work for less than six months a year.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
