Children allowed to work with family under Child Labour Bill amendment

The bill, which will ensure expeditious utilisation of accumulated unspent amounts available with the ad hoc Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), was moved by Environment and Forests Minister Anil Madhav Dave in the upper house soon after it passed a law on child labour.

The Bill was passed by Lok Sabha in May.

The penalty for employing a child has been increased to imprisonment between six months and two years (from three months to one year), or a fine of Rs 20,000 to Rs 50,000 (from Rs 10,000-20,000) or both. He said children were allowed to work with the family because there was no employer-employee equation in such situations. Children above 14 are allowed to legally work in such industries. Dattatreya said the amendments came “because of the pressure of NGOs. In reality, children who combine school with economic roles often work for long hours after school, or may drop out of school temporarily for extended periods of work”, laments a report by CRY (Child Rights and You), an NGO fighting for the cause of underprivileged children since 1979, on the tabled Child Labour Act. “It was not even discussed properly and I felt ashamed of the fact that the political class failed our children again”. “In a large number of families, children help parents in occupations such as agriculture and artisanship, and while helping the parents, children also learn the basics of these occupations”, the government said after the cabinet approved the amendments in May 2015.

Replying to debate on the Bill, Labour and Employment Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said that the bill is aligned with the statutes of the International Labour Organisation, ILO convention.

It defines children between 14-18 years as adolescents and says that children should not be employed in any hazardous occupations. Explaining the Family Enterprises clause in the Bill, Mr Dattatreya said, in a family enterprise, there will be no employer-employee relationship and there are sufficient safeguards.

The 2001 census counted 12.6 million child workers between the ages of five and 14 in India.