Fighting the menace of highest number of child labourers in the country, the Uttar Pradesh government on Friday ordered periodic drives at district and tehsil levels.
Chief secretary Javed Usmani directed labour department officials to chalk-out an effective strategy to identify child labourers and take up periodic drives for the purpose through the district and tehsil level task forces at least once every three months.
Compensation
Usmani, who was chairing a meeting of the state-level child labour eradication and rehabilitation core committee, said for each child labourer found employed in hazardous occupation, the employer should be made to pay a compensation of Rs 20,000.
In 2001, UP had 19.27 lakh child labourers. According to an official spokesman, the
chief secretary directed district magistrates to launch a drive for recovering dues of Rs 12.61 crore of this compensation amount and deposit it with district level child labour rehabilitation and welfare fund so that child labourers could benefit from the interest earned on them.
Health check-up
He also directed that the rescued child labourers, studying in special schools, should be given health check-ups, free medicine and medical facilities under the National Rural Health Mission, besides free textbooks by the district basic education officials.
He also directed that age certificates should be provided to identified child labourers within 48 hours in each case.