Bhanumathy (10) is seen selling books, cleaning wall hangings and other items every other day at different signals. Her brother Manickam, (12) works at a welding factory at Mylapore. Bhanu and Manickam are not alone; there are hundreds of them who toil in factories, on the beach, in brick kilns, etc. all over the city. Though there is a child labour law stating that children aged below 14 should not be employed, one can see them doing domestic chores or working as cleaners in hotels and malls.
Many rallies, demonstrations and awareness programmes have been organised to spread the message. Nobody is worried about the child labourers or follow the rules formulated by the 25-year-old Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act, except for some NGOs, which do their best to identify the deprived and provide education.
MCDS
The Montfort Community Development Society (MCDS) is one such NGO, which identifies and enrols children in its transit schools. It enrolled about 186 children, who were child labourers till a year ago, into various schools in Mylapore on June 12. These children had been put in the transit schools under the 11-month National Child Labour Programme (NCLP).
“Child labourers are exploited by employers and their parents. We at MCDS wanted to protect them, give them a fresh lease of life. So we run transit schools for them according to their age-group,” said Bro. Patrick, founder-director, MCDS.
MCDS has been intensively associated with NCLP for the past 12 years and aims to help child labourers, street children and school drop outs. It has about 30 transit schools (each has about 25 to 30 children) in Mylapore and Adyar. These schools admit children in the age-group 6-16 and educate them for a year after which they are readmitted into schools according to their age and intellectual capacity.
More than 2,800 children have so far been educated in these schools and many of them have made it to the main stream. They have joined institutions of higher learning and a few are also consistently topping their classes.
For these children, MCDS conducts classes for skill development, sports and games, recreational activities, street plays and public programmes. MCDS can be reached at 2491 4078 / 2446 0526.
