HYDERABAD: A joint operation by the Cyberabad-Hyderabad commissionerates in the wee hours of Wednesday wherein a bangle-making unit was busted in Indiranagar, Chandrayangutta yet again brings to fore the issue of child labour. The unit had employed 11 child labourers from Bihar.
Some 11 children, mainly Class II and III dropouts, along with a 22-year-old man, all from Nalanda, Nawada and Koderma districts of Bihar and Jharkhand were rescued from a gruesome 13-hour-long work schedule.
These kids, who were made to work under hazardous conditions for long hours, had to dip their tiny fingers in sulphuric acid and then apply it while preparing bangles.
While working with the chemicals, many children, ignorant of the hazardous affects, scratch their face, hands and other body parts. This has led to scars on their bodies.
"First, the scars were filled with puss. Later on they dried and blackened," said a rescued child labourer whose face and hands have been affected badly by the acid.
"I asked for medicines from owner's wife Rehana. What I got in was thrashing and stale food," said a 22-year-old Sintu Kumar.
The owner of the unit, Bablu Miya, who also hails from Bihar, had brought the children from rural areas, promising good income. "None of us wanted to come willingly. Our parents forced us. Once in Hyderabad, we were trapped," said another boy, a Class II dropout.
Working for excruciatingly painful hours, what the kids get is a meager `2,000 to `3,000, that too based on seniority level.
The children will be sent to Hyderabad Childline for a month, given weekly counselling in the presence of a five-member Child Welfare Committee and then Bihar Police team will be summoned to take them home, informed Maria of Hyderabad Childline.
While the children expressed willingness to rejoin school back home, skeptical officials are hoping to see them soon, in some other factory. However, these children are first-timers and were not caught in a similar raid on a bangle-making factory in the same locality last year.