Anantnag Dec22: – Childhood is the most innocent phase in our life. During this stage of life , the foundation is laid for adult life. It is the phase when we are carefree, fun-loving, learning, playing. A flash back into the childhood, for most of us, there are sweet memories. It was wonderful to have grown up with such carefree abandonment while we had parents, grandparents and others looking after us. This is the story of many children in south Kashmir whose childhood is full of worries. They would do anything to get out of the dungeons of being children and controlled and tortured by others. They want to break-free from this world. Some manage to get out and get a better life, but many continue to be where they are, not out of choice, but force. This is the true but ugly face of child labor.
10 year old Zubair Ahmad is from Brad Anantnag selling polythene Bags in Anantnag. He is proud of having provided monetary support to his poor family for the past two years. At the age of 8 ,he started working as a laborer in his locality to overcome financial constraints faced by his family. Today, at 10, he calls himself a professional. His dreams do not go beyond earning money for his family. When asked if he ever thought of education, he adds, It would have taken me years to earn had I run after studies. I started working at a very young age, which was not otherwise possible. Zubair, along with his father who is a laborer, supports a family of six. Being the eldest sibling amongst other four, Zubair shoulders the family responsibility.
Another child, Suhail Rasheed , 13 year old from Batango Anantnag sells water chestnuts in Achabal Adda, Anantnag. Talking to Kashmir Observer, he said, I started work when I was 8 year old. I belong to a poor family ; my father is a laborer, he is suffering from Diabetes from last 12 years. I am the elder son of my family. My work was only hope to income in my family.
Scores of children like Zubair and Suhail have been put to work in different sectors in South Kashmir. Over the years, the menace of child labor has shown a drastic increase in the Valley. Today one of the greatest maladies that have spread across the world is that of child labor, coupled with child abuse. There are many industries and individuals, who engage innocent children in work under difficult conditions. They make them work for long hours weaving delicate threads to make the worlds most expensive carpets. They make them work in dangerous factory units manufacturing fireworks or chemicals. They make children carry load even heavier than their own body weight. They engage children as bus conductors making them shout loud and hang around a moving bus. They engage children as a vendor in straight roads; they engage children to buy products in shops.
The major employers of children in Kashmir are the handicraft sector, automobile workshops, homes, Vendors and Shopkeepers. Most child laborers are illiterate or school dropouts. Most parents families believe that a child is born to them to earn more money for the family. The child is just another source of income. And traditional business families, in fact, put the child into the business rather than sending them to school. Under the pretext of training them, they make them work long hours, sometimes resorting to physical torture in case the child makes mistakes. Poverty is the major reason for child labor in Kashmir which is witnessing drastic rise, said Professor Neelofar Wani, a linguist at the University Kashmir. He further said that child labour exists in different parts of the Valley, a system of usury, in which the debtor or his descendents or his dependents have to work for the creditor without reasonable wages or with no wages in order to extinguish the debt. While the Department of Labour and Employment in Anantnag says it is doing its best to fight child labor, the defunct Child labor Act speaks for itself. During the year 2014-2015, only 36 offenders were prosecuted, of which only five were fined. Given the dreadful nature of child labor which snuffs dreams as well as lives, it is about time that society wakes up to this menace and eliminates.
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