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In May2006, the ILO published its second Global Report on Child Labour. The
report indicated that in 2004 there were 218 million children trapped in child labour, of
whom 126 million were in hazardous work. The number of child labourers globally fell
by 11 percent over the last four years, while that of children in hazardous work decreased
by 26 percent which is significant and positive trend.
However, the least progress is being made in the Sub-Saharan Africa, the region
with the highest incidence of child labour, and where the overall number of child
labourers rose somewhat-there are now nearly 50 million children under the age of 15
estimated to be working in the region.
Of nearly 218 million children engaged in child labor around the world, the vast
majority—69 percent, or some 150 million—are working in agriculture. Child
agricultural workers frequently work for long hours in scorching heat, haul heavy loads
of produce, are exposed to toxic pesticides, and suffer high rates of injury from sharp
knives and other dangerous tools. Their work is grueling and harsh, violating their rights
to health, education, and protection from work that is hazardous or exploitative.
According to the ILO's new report on child labor, the number of children working in
agriculture is nearly ten times that of children involved in factory work such as garment
manufacturing, carpet-weaving, or soccer-ball stitching.
In our country child labour has been on the rise due to extreme poverty, low level of
literacy, absence of educational facilities, gender discrimination, massive migration from
rural areas and river erosion. The worst forms of child labour include working in
wielding workshops, helper of tempo or human haulers, bidi factory, bedding store,
tannery industries, battery factory and others. According to the second National Child
Labour Survey 2003, there are 42.39 million children aged 5-17 years, including 7.42
million economically active. Of them, about 3.18 million were engaged in child labours
representing 7.5 per cent of the entire child population of this range. About five million
children out of 42.39 million aged 5-17 years were working and not attending school.
About 52.7 per cent were engaged in agriculture and forestry,14.6 per cent in
manufacturing and 14.2 per cent in trading, according to the survey. there are about 1
crore children under the age of 18 who are involved with different sorts of risky and
harmful jobs, said a survey conducted by Save the Children, UK. According to the
survey, 24 per cent of them are engaged in hazardous child labour to earn their livelihood
while about 99 per cent of child labours deprived of having any basic facilities at their
workplaces. Moreover, 80 per cent of child labours have to work for more time than the
working hours, the survey says, adding that even 38 per cent of them works more than 10
hours every day.
Concluding Remarks
The existence of child workers and child labour is an indicator of poverty and the
depressed economic status of a section of the population that supplies child labourer. If
the wider definition of child labour is accepted, which is that all the children who do not
attend school should be counted as child labour, the incidence of child labour is
enormous. Intuitively, to create a theme for child labour is an easy task, but the tougher
part is finding ladders for child labourers to climb out of the deep pits of violence and
discrimination they live in. Elimination of child labour is a long process and it can't be
done without the help of everyone. The best way to stop child abuse is to make people
aware about child rights.