NEW DELHI: A total of 1.33 lakh child labourers were rescued and enrolled in Special Training Centres across the country in the past one year under the National Child Labour Project.The rescued children were receiving education in over 3,200 special training centres across 280 districts in 19 states. West Bengal has the highest number of such centres — 667. It also has the highest number of rescued children — 27,241. Bengal is followed by Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra with 440 and 356 special training centres and 18,951 and 14,005 rescued kids.
“The special training centres are aimed rehabilitating the rescued children by bringing them into mainstream education through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,” a Labour Ministry official said.Interestingly, no special training centres have been established in the Capital and the number of children rescued is also nil. Two other states — Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand — have no training centres and have not reported even a single rescued child.
“The reason for this could be that people are scared to employ children in the Capital as the consequences could be dire. With respect to Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, it is difficult to say why children have not been rescued. We plan to set up training centres there soon,” the official said. Incidentally, there has been no release of grants to Chhattisgarh under the scheme in the last one year.
In terms of fund releases, West Bengal received the maximum grants of `1,916 lakh. However, it was down from `2,269 lakh in 2016-17. Most states have seen a cut in grant. Odisha’s funds going down from `290 lakh to `8 lakh. Even Bihar, which has 156 training centres and over 7,000 rescued children, saw funds dip from `948 lakh to `168 lakh. The total grant to all the 280 districts has gone down from `9,299.25 lakh to `8,284.07 lakh.