India has a long way to go to eliminate child labour: Parliamentary panel
India has a long way to go before it achieve its commitment of eliminating child labour in the country by 2025, a parliamentary panel said, suggesting a need for a uniform definition of ‘child’ under various laws.
“The implementation of the policy has to go a long way for achieving the objective of elimination of child labour as per commitments made by the county after ratification of ILO conventions and to achieve the target stipulated in Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 to end all forms of child labour by 2025,” the parliamentary standing committee on labour said in its 52nd report tabled in the Parliament on Wednesday.
Noting that different definitions of ‘child’ under various laws leads to ambiguity, the committee called for examining the discrepancies in the criteria for determination of age of child and suggested a relook at the offences as being congnizable or non-cognizable to ensure that these do not lead to any ambiguity as well as delay in justice to the aggrieved children.
The Committee noted that the employment of children in contravention of the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 (CALPRA) Act is a cognizable offence, whereas under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, it is a non-cognizable offence.
The Committee also proposed setting up of a National Level Child Tracking Mechanism to facilitate coordination among the states and the centre in such a way that the monitoring at district level is reported to states and from there to centre by digital mode through coordinated efforts of all concerned so as to facilitate prevention, tracing, tracking, rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration of the rescued children.
