Address poverty to eradicate child labour: CJ

from The Deccan Herald

Implementing the law against child labour will be difficult unless it is backed by concerted measures to eradicate poverty from society, Chief Justice of Karnataka Cyriac Joseph said here on Saturday.

He was speaking after inaugurating a one-day workshop on awareness of Child Labour Act, organised by the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority. “By making laws, we can’t eradicate poverty. We have no dearth of laws but the real issue is not targeted or addressed. Determined and concerted efforts need to be made to eradicate poverty, so that children get motivated to pursue education and parents get inclined to send their children to school,” he said.

Justice Joseph said that poverty comprised the ‘practical’ side of the issue of child labour and added that the question on why parents were sending their children to work needed to be addressed. “The hard reality is that, like the employer who eyes profit by employing children, parents too look at such options to survive poverty,” he said.

Restaurateurs, construction industry promoters and owners of automobile garages attended the workshop, which was jointly organised by the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority, Labour Department, Women and Child Development Department and UNICEF. The delegates were briefed at the workshop on the legal issues involved in child labour, apart from the child welfare schemes taken up by the State.