Doubts arising on renewed ‘data’ on child labour

Context

The Centre does not have any data on child labour in the country and a reason for this is the drying up of budgetary provisions meant for the National Child Labour Project (NCLP), which had been monitoring the issue for about three decades.

What is Child Labour?

• Child labour is the term used to describe the exploitation of children for any type of job that prevents them from having an equal opportunity to receive an education and have a typical childhood.
• It refers to work that:
• is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children
• interferes with their schooling by: depriving them of the opportunity to attend school, obliging them to leave school prematurely or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work
• To meet the government’s development goals by 2030, the use of child labour must be ended.
  
  

About National Child Labour Project (NCLP) Scheme

• The NCLP Scheme is a Central Sector Scheme.
• Since 1988, the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) Scheme has been carried out by the Ministry of Labour and Employment with the goal of rehabilitating child labourers.
• The NCLP rescues or removes children between the ages of 9 and 14 from employment and places them in NCLP Special Training Centers.
• Through strong collaboration with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, children between the ages of 5-8 are directly connected to the formal education system.
• A dedicated online portal named PENCiL (Platform for Effective Enforcement for No Child Labour) is developed for better monitoring and implementation.