House Panel mulls increasing minimum age of child labour from 14 to 18 yrs

Thirty-five years after the National Policy of Child Labour was declared in 1987, a house panel is likely to recommend a review, even as volunteer organisations said that such a policy never fully existed on paper.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour, Textiles and Skill Development, headed by senior MP, the Biju Janata Dal’s Bhartruhari Mahtab has mounted a comprehensive review of the Policy, holding meetings with volunteer organisations and state governments.

A senior member of the Committee told DH that their preliminary assessment has shown that the Policy will need modifications. “There are not enough schemes for children engaged in labour, and the Policy is dated. We will most likely suggest modifications,” the member said.

The lone scheme for children engaged in labour was the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) scheme, which was discontinued in 2016.

One of the representatives to the meeting told DH that the Nation Policy does not really exist. “There is no Policy in the right sense of the term, what we have is an action plan,” the representative added.

The Committee took representations from several volunteer organisations on Tuesday including Bachpan Bachao Andolan, CHILDLINE, Prayas, Save the Children India; and SOS Children's Villages India. On Wednesday, the state governments of Rajasthan, Delhi, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Assam and Tamil Nadu gave their representations on the Policy.

One of the key recommendations that has emerged from the meetings is the increasing of the minimum age of labour for children to 18 from the existing 14 years. An amendment to the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Amendment Act in 2016 now prohibits the employment of children below 14 years.

In addition, data on the number of children engaged in child labour across the country is not known. The Centre has said that it does not have an idea of the current number after the NCLP was discontinued. As per Census 2011 data, over 10.1 million children are engaged as child labourers in India. Another estimate from volunteer organisations presented at the meeting was that there are anywhere between 35 to 40 million children engaged in labour.