Child Labour Day: Rehab funds worth crores collecting dust with govt dept for nearly 27 years: RTI

LUCKNOW Data collected from the state’s labour department in May this year has revealed that only three of the 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh have been disbursing the funds — collected in fines from employers of child labourers — to the rescued children and their families since 2017.

Further, disbursements to rescued children are being made only in select districts in U.P. and that too, at irregular intervals since 1996. This means that the rehabilitation money is not reaching rescued child labourers in the state properly for about 27 years now. This information was received in response to an RTI query filed by a child rights activist.

A sorry state of affairs

From 2017 up to 2023, a sum of ₹10,725,729 was collected from the employers of child labourers. However, only ₹96,522 (in all) were distributed among victims, and that too only in Mahoba, Hathras, and Unnao. The highest amount was collected in fines — to the tune of ₹9,49,900 — from Aligarh but not a penny has been disbursed in the past six years. In comparison, in the period between 1996 and 2017, these disbursements were made sporadically in 19 U.P. districts. It still stood at an unfortunate 1.42% of the entire amount collected in that time from 1996 to 2018.

In an earlier conversation with HT, Syed Rizwan Ali, the state coordinator for child labour and bonded labour at the labour commissioner’s office, had said that the department did its bit in identifying the children and handing the list over to the ministry of women and child development (WCD) and further verification and collection of details was up to the WCD. Only after the WCD draws up the final list of children with the required documents, can they be integrated into the government schemes designed for their benefit, like the rehabilitation fund, he said.

Umesh Gupta, child rights activist and researcher, who has been regularly requisitioning fund details from the labour department, said, “Every year, the U.P. Police and labour department organise a month-long campaign in June to rescue child labourers. This has become a symbolic gesture now. If the rescued child labourers are not rehabilitated properly, and funds meant for their education and welfare are not utilised, then all the efforts are being taken in vain.”

Other social workers have also alleged that the labour department is ultimately responsible for disbursing these funds but their lack of follow-up botches the data. “They identify children employed as child labour, and pass it off as a rescue. Identification is only the first step in rehabilitation,” said another Lucknow-based child rights activist.

What the law says

A law passed in 1996 under the Child Labour (Regulation and Prohibition) Act in 1986, directs that every district ought to have a fund that gets distributed to the victims. This fund, called the Child and Adolescent Labour and Rehabilitation Fund, which was later adapted in 2016 to include adolescents (children between 14-18 years), has been carelessly managed by the labour department ever since it was put in place, and even more glaringly so in the past six years.

While from 1996 to 2017, a few of the districts were maintaining and disbursing the funds to the children and their families eligible for reparations, the situation took a turn in 2017. In Lucknow alone, over 700 children were rescued from child labour in 2022, said deputy labour commissioner Rakesh Dwivedi. However, he also revealed that the fund collated from collecting fines has been accumulating for the last 25 years since the law was put into place.

“We do not have any rules based on which we can start disbursing them to the children. Fines collected from an employer for one child, cannot then be disbursed to another — and while we have the law from the Centre directing that we collect and distribute these funds with an additional percentage from the government, we also need state rules on how to go about that process,” said Dwivedi.

He added that Uttar Pradesh is the only state in India that started a scheme like Bal Shramik Vidya Yojana, which was established in 2020 during the Covid phase. It allows for all child labour rescues since then to receive a certain amount for five years until the completion of their education — boys get ₹1,000 monthly and girls are given ₹1,200.

As far as the Child and Adolescent Labour and Rehabilitation Fund goes, “We have had the talks and put some rules in place, they are currently in the process of being vetted — I am quite confident that in a month’s time, we will be able to start distributing the money from the corpus fund to the rescues,” said Dwivedi.