BENGALURU: The Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR), along with several government departments and agencies, will launch a pilot initiative from November to make the state free of child labour. The programme will start with one district – Tumakaru.
Speaking to The New Sunday Express, KSCPCR chairperson Dr Anthony Sebastian said the objective is to completely eradicate child labour, which is also a legal offence. The Commission organised a meeting on October 22 on the prevention of child labour along with Department Women and Child Development, District Child Protection Unit (DCPU), Tumakuru, labour and police departments, lawyers and NGOs. “The meeting was facilitated by former advocate general Ravikumar Verma, who has assured all assistance in the Tumakaru project,” said Dr Anthony.
During the meeting, the stakeholders decided to form a core committee to work on the initiative. This will oversee the activities such as training of teachers and Anganwadi workers on child labour, conducting research on the number of child labours in the district, formulating a rehabilitation plan based on the available standard operating procedures (SOPs) and to oversee the available funding support for the rescued children.
“We plan to train one teacher in every government school, Anganwadi workers and NGOs, through whom we will ensure that each child is in school and there are no dropouts. We will hold awareness campaigns and mobile rallies to spread the word against child labour,” said Dr Anthony. “This will also involve helping families, which have lost their livelihood during the lockdown, get some source of income so that family as a whole remains a cohesive unit and children are not made to bear the brunt,” he added.
In phase-2, legal action will be taken against those who send or employ children as workers. The commission chairperson added that Tumakaru has been identified for the pilot project because of various reasons including its proximity to the state capital Bengaluru. The project will take a minimum one year’s time.
Dr Sebastian and Bal Bhavan chairperson Chikkamma Basavaraj recently conducted the pre-launch of the KSCPR website and the online grievance registration system ‘Kare app.’ The public can register their complaints related to child rights violations in English and Kannada. The app will provide real-time status of the complaints registered by the public.