TIRUCHY: Thirteen-year-old Vignesh* was rescued from a brick kiln at Tattayangarpettai near Musiri and enrolled in a special training centre in 2017 for bridge education, vocational training, midday meal and stipend. Fast forward to 2022, he is back in the kiln, working with his parents, after the centre was shut.
According to sources, the National Child Labour Project (NCLP), a Union Labour Ministry initiative to eradicate child labour, was wound up in 2021 and merged with Samagra Siksha Abhiyan (SSA), a Union Ministry of Education scheme. The ministry issued a formal notice in March 2022 to subsume NCLP under SSA, and the centres run by NCLP were shut down. This has led several children like Vignesh to return to their previous work.
Vignesh’s mother said, “We cannot afford the transport charges to reach a government school. The stipend of `400 we used to receive has also been stopped from March. Why would we spend so much money for education when we earn a mere `300 a day?”
Devi*, mother of Santosh* (13) at Narikuravar Colony in Devarayaneri, said, “When the centre functioned here, teachers would persuade our children to at least come and sit in the classes. This helped to keep a check on their bad habits.”A teacher at NCLP said the centre in Devarayaneri, one among 10 in the district, had around 30 children.
NCLP staff R Sasikalaat at the Manachanallur centre said, “Our children were mostly from Karnataka, who were engaged in begging. Now, they have moved to places like Samayapurma and Srirangam, among others. Government schools in those areas will not be ready to enrol these children. This is because teachers would be asked to sign a ledger at the nearby police station whenever the children are caught begging.”
An activist from Erode, Sudar Natarajan, said, “Several tribal children benefitted from these centres. When the centres were closed, the children were officially enrolled in nearby schools. But, due to lack of proper monitoring by SSA, they are not attending schools anymore.”
A source in NCLP said, “SSA does not help the students to reach school, which means they would have no means to travel 5 to 10 km every day.” According to sources, around 2 lakh children were enrolled and around 1,20,000 put in the mainstream since the inception of the project in 1988. In Tiruchy alone, 28,000 children have been rescued and 11,000 enrolled in mainstream schools.
S Pearline, project director of NCLP in Tiruchy, said, “We will go for proper fieldwork to ensure that the children are attending schools regularly.”A Campaign Against Child Labour study in Tamil Nadu, released in 2021, reportedly said child labour had increased by 280% from 2019, citing Covid-related economic constraints as the main reason.
R Vidyasagar, a former Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF, said, “Rescued children cannot immediately join mainstream schools as teachers would expect considerable results from them. The training centres remained an ideal bridge for such children for a period of 9 to 24 months.”
When contacted, a senior SSA official in Tiruchy said they would be monitoring the rescued children on a regular basis. State-level SSA additional state project director R Sudhan refused to answer questions on how they would be monitoring the education of such children.
*Names changed