Operations Smile and Muskan, conducted every six month, find a total of 167 children are being subjected to child labour at these brick kilns. District authorities plan hiring teachers who know Odia to teach kids of the kiln workers at onsite schools.
PEDAPALLI: “Please don’t talk to us, the employer will scold us,” says Sulomi, a 32-year-old brick kiln worker from Ragavapur village of Pedapalli district in Telangana. Sulomi, along with her husband and two daughters, is one of the 13,000 odd migrant labourers from Odisha who are working in the brick kilns of Karimnagar and Pedapalli districts.
While Sulomi toils at the kiln, her five-year-old daughter Rukhmi could be seen picking up pieces of red bricks and dumping them in a pile, working alongside her mother. Rukhmi hasn’t been to a school here, neither have the other children whose parents work at these kilns. Children as young as 5 years can be seen toiling along side their parents.
The five-year-old used to attend a lower primary school in Balangir, where the family hails from. But in Pedapalli all she does is lift bricks along with her mother. “The children do work here sometimes but not always. There are no schools here for the children,” said Sulomi.
What survey reports suggest
Operation Smile and Operation Muskan, conducted every six months, found a total of 167 children being subjected to child labour at these kilns.
“Around 50 per cent of the children we rescued were from these kilns. We sent them back to their homes after giving stern warning to their parents as well as kiln owners. These children lived with their parents while working at the kilns,” said Dr G Komuraiah, chairperson, Child Welfare Committee, Karimnagar.
A bloody past
It was not long ago, 2015 to be precise, when a brick kiln supervisor beat a pregnant woman to death. This had triggered a protest from the migrant labourers who took out a walk to the Pedapalli labour office. However, this was not the end to it as there have been numerous reports of abuse against migrant labourers at brick kilns since then.
The former as well as present Karimnagar district collectors had issued stern warnings to owners, going as far as threatening them to shut down the kilns if they did not follow the law. However, on the ground level nothing much has changed in the lives of these workers.
“When it rains, we will leave. We stay here for eight months. The owners have paid us `18,000 when we were in Odisha and don’t pay us anything here,” says Sulomi, looking over her shoulder, keeping an eye out for the supervisor or owner.
A potent barrier
The road leading to Ragavapur village is dotted with brick kilns along either sides. At regular intervals, labourers can be seen loading bricks on vehicles under the hawk-like supervision of a kiln staff.
“No, don’t talk to me, my owner will ask for me,” said a man in his late fifties when the TNIE team tried to initiate a conversation at a tea shop. The man walked away looking around to see if anyone had noticed us attempt a conversation with him.
Speaking about the abuse happening at the kilns, collector Sarfaraz Ahmad came up with an interesting point. “There is abuse happening at times or at certain locations but it’s something that we cannot prove in a court of law,” the newly-appointed collector said. “We are trying to ensure it does not happen. However, the greatest difficulty is a very potent language barrier existing between the people of the two states. The migrant labourers don’t have a voice,” added the collector.
Authorities mull schools for kids of kiln workers
The district administration is taking efforts to set up schools for the children of migrant labourers with the help of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). The aim is to get teachers who know Odia. The SSA does provide Odia medium education as an option for students in Telanagna. However, the SSA report for Telangana in 2014 points out there has been ‘Zero’ student enrollement for the Odia medium education in Telangana.
“We will try to arrange access to the midday meal scheme for them,” said Sarfaraz. “The children may not be going to school right now but the issue is a little more complicated than that,” he added.
Meanwhile, the administration had suggested the brick kiln owners to identify youths “who have studied Class X or XII,” to teach the children of migrant labourers. The onus to bring the teacher will be on the brick kiln owners. “If a school is set up, there should be some benefit to these children and should not be just on paper,” he added.
The collector said the salary for these teachers will come from SSA. “One of the brick kiln owners did bring a Class X pass-out person to teach these children. However, the man didn’t stick around for too long,” said Prabhakar Reddy, a social worker with Modern Architects for Rural India (MARI), an NGO working with rescued child labourers in Karimnagar. No new initiatives were taken after that, he added.
Some of the migrants are registered in Odisha and the rest are registered in Telangana as there is a labourer MoU between these two states. The district administration has recorded as many as 12,000 to 13,000 migrant labourers in the bifurcated Karimnagar district alone. The administration has registered 5,000 migrant labourers recently and have warned brick kiln owners that unless the families were registered, they would not be allowed to operate.
“The law says children below five years of age should not come but the problem is when the parents come here to work they may not be comfortable leaving their children behind,” said Sarfaraz, “I can close my eyes to it but I cannot a wish away a situation that is existing on the ground. For us to say that the child should go back is not possible,” he added.