Know your candidates — VIII

Mr Sawarn Masih Bhatti
(Independent)

An educationist, Mr Sawarn Masih Bhatti retired as Principal from the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan with 34 years of experience. A postgraduate, Principal Bhatti says he is the first choice of educated and intellectual voters of the union territory. After retirement in 1994, he has taken to social service and has been associated with various literary, adult education associations, including the Dr B.R. Ambedkar Study Circle. He has been rendering free service to the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti and other schools in the city, besides being closely associated with various Christian organisations of the union territory.

Committed to the welfare of the weaker sections of society, he says he has entered electoral politics to meet the aspirations of the people as society needs good, neat, clean and honest people for a radical change. Principal Bhatti is for status quo on Chandigarh and respect for all faiths.

Claiming support of all sections of society, including his large number of students and associates in academics, he says he is for value system in education, including quality and free education for girls and members of the depressed classes.

He is also promising to work for amendment to building bylaws, better sanitation, simplification of lease-hold system, toning up of the law and order machinery, due representation to all sections of society on various advisory committees of the Administration, solve problems of ex-servicemen and work for overall development of the city.

— Concluded

10 cr kids have to labour to live
By Varinder Singh
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, Sept 2 — About six crore child labourers are employed in agriculture, sport and carpet industries and the domestic sector in the country with an increase of 10 to 12 per cent every year.

If the children working in homes as domestic help are included, their number will touch the 10 crore mark.

The data collected by the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) reveal that more than 70 per cent of child labour is employed in the agriculture sector and the number of such workers is increasing due to the absence of a proper check and lack of preventive measures on the part of the authorities. Multi-national corporations are also contributing to the swelling of numbers of child labour.

"The growth of child labour has a lot to do with the government inaction and lack of zeal to put an end to slavery of children. This can be ascertained from the fact that the National Human Rights Commission had suggested to the Union Government way back in 1997 that if any government servant was found employing a child as domestic help, an adverse entry should be made in his service book. Though the suggestion was implemented by the governments of Kerala, Maharashtra and Tripura, nothing was done towards this end by the Union Government," lamented Mr R. S. Chaurasia, General Secretary of SACCS.

Mr Chaurasia, who was on a visit to the city, said the biggest problem in putting an end to child labour was the absence of law prohibiting employment of children as domestic help. "Due to this, we don't include domestic servants in our survey, even as four crore children are employed as servants in households in the country as per the UNICEF report. There is no system to detect children working in households, thus making their job more difficult," he added, saying that there has been a two-fold rise in the number of child labourers during the past three years.

"Earlier, the annual growth rate was stable at 5 per cent, but now it has touched 10-12 per cent. For this, the entry of MNCs is also responsible as they have encouraged the contract system, and the contractors prefer to rope in children to save money," said Mr Chaurasia.

He said that nothing but compulsory education for children up to the primary level could solve the problem. "But nobody wants to implement such a scheme as it involves an annual expenditure of Rs 8,000 crore," lamented Mr Chaurasia.

The data prepared by SACCS also revealed that a major part of child labourers were employed in the sports industry, primarily concentrated in Jalandhar and Meerut. The SACCS survey estimated that 30,000 children were working in the sports industry in Jalandhar alone, while 7,000 were busy making footballs in Meerut. The problem was of a high magnitude in the carpet making industry as there were about two lakh children employed in this industry in and around Mirzapur, Allahabad and Varanasi. The Exports Monitoring Committee, set up by Jalandhar-based sport goods exporters, however, does not agree with the SACCS estimate and asserts that there are only 5,000 to 7,000 such workers.

"The carpet industry is the only sector where the number of child workers has decreased from three lakh to two lakh due to a campaign launched by SACCS," claimed Mr Chaurasia. He said the dip in the number of child labourers has done good to adult labourers as due to scarcity of skilled workers created this way, their average daily earnings have increased from Rs 20 to Rs 80.

Stressing the need to introduce compulsory education up to the primary level, Mr Chaurasia said a little effort by the government, by raising the tax from existing 16 per cent to 16.5 per cent could provide enough funds towards this end.