Trafficking expert Siddharth Kara on the use of child labor in New Delhi where the Commonwealth Games is being held:
“I reliably documented, in just a few days, 32 cases of forced labor and 14 cases of child labor all for construction related to the Commonwealth Games,” Kara said on Connect the World.
“The children I saw were the ones where I felt I had documented child labor – where children were working, picking up hammers, banging stones, paving entry ways and planting grass along the roads to beautify them, hours and hours at a time.”
“I documented children aged seven, eight, nine, ten years old working alongside their families in this mad rush to get the construction completed.”
“The conditions are sub-human and that’s really the only word I can apply.”
Very intelligently put by Siddharth, however this situation is triggered by a much larger problem and can not be ignored.
Majority of these families do not live in New Delhi or NCR; they are from different parts of the country, parts which are suffering from —
— Monsoon Floods
— Naxalite-Maoist Insurgencies
— Ongoing negligence of ruling government of the country towards the basic needs of such families/villages and states
When you put above mentioned options in front of a family, who is living in the worst conditions on their respective villages/states, I am certain that they will opt to work in a place where they do not get killed by the struggle of ‘Naxalite-Maoist Insurgency’ or by hunger or by far worst disease but the above facts certainly does not justify this situation from our point of view.