JOIN US'Save the Children', an NGO, which started a 45-day campaign against child labour, asked 45 prominent people from various walks of life to endorse a petition at the end of its campaign.
The petition sought for urgent amendments to the existing child labour law in the wake of the Right to Education Act, which provides for free and compulsory elementary education to all children of the age of 6-14 years.
By signing the petition, they all have agreed that the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act (CLPRA) should be amended as soon as possible to ban employment of children under 14, the NGO said in a release on Monday.
Harpal Singh of the NGO said, "With this historic legislation (RTE), the CLPRA must be amended immediately. You cannot have one law that promises elementary education to all children and another one regulating child labour. Children cannot be both working and in school at the same time - let's ensure that it is only the latter."
Officially, there are close to 13 million children who are engaged in child labour in India, but unofficial estimates put the figure at over 40 million.
The CLPRA makes a distinction between hazardous and non- hazardous categories of work for children below 14. But, activists say there can't be any distinction between the categories. Approximately 70 per cent of children in child labour are in agriculture. Yet, the CLPRA does not take cognisance of this category of children. The law must be amended to include the millions of children engaged in child labour on agricultural farms, the NGO stressed.
Those who signed the petition included members of the newly reconstituted National Advisory Council Harsh Mander, NC Saxena and Anu Agha; Members of the Planning Commission Arun Maira and Syeda Hameed; Chairperson of the NCPCR Shantha Sinha; actor Rahul Bose among others.
Several MPs such as Kalikesh Singh Deo (BJD); Jose K Mani, Viplove Thakur and Meenakshi Natarajan (Congress); Raghavendra Yeddyurappa (BJP) also endorsed the petition.