A ray of hope
After she finishes with the pots and pans
and the scrubbing and cleaning, 15-year-old Sunita often steals
out into the evening.
From her employer's house, she walks directly to the
Samta Dham slum which houses around 2,000 families from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. This is where she lives,
but on these special occasions when she is not too tired, Sunita
doesn't go straight home. Instead, she visits the
local voluntary centre which offers non-formal education and
vocational training to youngsters like her.
The centre, run by Alamb, a non-governmental organisation, in
west Delhi's Hastal colony is indeed a glimmer of hope for
the 500-odd working children of Samta Dham.
"Seventyfive per cent of the children here are engaged as ragpickers," says Alamb in-charge Rustam Ali, "and 20 per cent are girls
in the 12 to 17 age group."
Alamb has been working in the area since 1984. Funded by
the Child Relief and You, it strives to
rehabilitate the girl child by imparting education. The aim is to prepare her for 'meaningful and dignified work.'
The NGO now operates four non-formal education centres, five
balwadis and three remedial education classes. It also gives a stipend to encourage parents to send their children over.
''The majority of the girls
who come here are in the 8 to 14 age group, generally working as
domestic servants," said a teacher, "To ensure their regular attendance, we have to constantly counsel the parents.''
Of the 500 children in the area, the rehabilitation scheme has
covered
only 125 so far. This, according to Alamb official Ali, is thanks to
the parents's
money-mindedness and indifference about their daughters's fate.
"No matter how much we
counsel not to marry them off at a tender
age, our words fall on deaf ears," he said, "They will go back and do just
that. What can we do?"
Though in the absence of documented data, the plight of the girl child -- especially domestic workers --
more or less remains grey, there is no doubt it needs urgent attention.
The Delhi-based NGO Centre of Concern for Child Labour has been formed
for just this.
"Initially, mothers used to be shy
to admit their daughters who accompanied them were also working
as domestics," says Molly Chacko, who is in charge of CCFCl's Trilokpuri centre, "Now they have got over it."
The focus of the centre, Chacko says, is to prevent girls from being
forced into
the labour market. It has 300-odd girls enrolled, and even provide
free tuitions in a bid to encourage higher education.
One of CCFCL's success stories is that of 18-year-old ex-domestic Durga. She had joined the Trilokpuri centre four years ago to learn stitching. Subsequently, she took a beautician course and is now working at a local parlour earning Rs 1,200 a
month.
A study, which the NGO undertook recently, divides the girls in domestic
sector into two categories -- those engaged in household tasks and
those in outdoor work. Middle and upper middle class families with small
children
prefer to employ young girls because they came
'cheap' and was considered to be 'safe', the study revealed.
Another finding was that a majority of domestic workers were orphans, brought up in an atmosphere of poverty and starvation. The study also found that, like all other women workers in the
informal sector, the child domestics were subject to false allegations. A girl domestic,
for example, was arrested by the Delhi police some time ago on a
complaint lodged by her employer that she had stolen gold ornaments.
It later turned out the employer was lying so as not to give the girl her arrears!
The CCFCL has recommended the girl domestic workers be covered by
the
Child Labour Act, 1986.
Another study by the NGO found that the highest concentration of
child workers in the capital is in the trans-Yamuna area, among
migrants from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Again, the majority are engaged as domestic servants.
"There is no mechanism in the country to help them," said CCFCL director Joseph Gathia. "not even a Supreme Court
judgment to address their needs."
UNI
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