December 2007 Edition
Rina Mukherji
Kolkata
AFTER her father’s death, five-year-old Sihuli
Kalia was sent by her mother to work at a home
in New Alipore in Kolkata. Sihuli’s job as to
look after a baby, cook, clean and wash for a family
of three. It was decided that her mother would be
paid Rs 200 at an interval of three months or more.
Sihuli’s employers often beat her up. “My mistress
even cracked my skull once,” she recalls.
Her heartless employers found her ‘inefficient’.
They sent her to work at their parents home in
Sakherbazaar. Here, Sihuli befriended Archana Banerjee, an elderly domestic worker. “Mashi
(aunty) used to cook there. Seeing how I was illtreated,
she found me another job at Sakherbazaar.” But that didn’t end Sihuli’s problems.
The family’s college-going son would often
try to get physical with her. Complaints bore no
fruit. “Mashi advised me to give up that job and
move in with her.” Sihuli now works part time in
three homes for Rs 1,200 per month. Her working
hours are from 6 am to 7pm.
On October 10 last year, the Central Government
amended the Child Labour Prevention Act to ban children
under 14 from working as domestic servants
and in dhabas, hotels and other commercial establishments.
Employment of children was made a punishable offence. But a year later, surveys by Save the Children and Bal Raksha Bharat prove that the problem is far from eradicated. Even today 74 per cent of child domestic workers are under the age of 16. Only three state governments -- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka -- have published action plans for the rescue and rehabilitation of working children as directed by the Central Government. Although child domestic work has been recognised by the International Labour Organisation as one of the most intolerable forms of child work, and been compared to a new form of slavery, it is extremely difficult to protect children from working as domestics.
For one, domestic workers themselves don’t know about the law. They recruit other children to work in homes, believing they are just helping them earn money and stave off hunger. Take the case of Moni Jana. She came to Kolkata when she was a little over 15. She cooks, cleans and washes for a paltry Rs 400, and her boarding and lodging are taken care of by her employers. They even helped her open a bank account. She brought her uncle’s 10-year- old daughter, Jhuma Pradhan, to work in Behala a year ago. Since then Jhuma has been working in the neighbourhood for Rs 200 and lives with Moni. “I dust, sweep and wash utensils,” she says. A month ago, Moni fixed up a neighbour’s nine-yearold daughter, Monica Manna, in a neighbouring home in Sakherbazar. Monica is ‘learning to work.’ The nine-year-old girl, the eldest of four siblings, whose father is a barber back home, can grind masala, wash utensils and dust her employer’s home. As per surveys conducted by Save the Children and the Chennai-based Tulir, physical abuse in the form of beating, burning and slapping is faced by 68.3 per cent of child domestics in West Bengal, and nearly 86 per cent of the children have faced emotional abuse. Save the Children and Tulir found that 20.3 per cent were forced to have sexual intercourse, while various degrees of molestation were common to 32.2 per cent of the children, which included both girls and boys.
Such cases have been hitting the headlines time and again. Some years ago, Kolkata was shocked by the case of seven -year- old Rozina Khatun. The little girl worked as a domestic in a schoolteacher’s home in Behala. One day, she fell asleep while taking care of her employer’s four-month-old son. When the schoolteacher saw that her son had rolled off the bed while she was away she beat up Rozina mercilessly. The little girl needed stitches on her head. Ironically, this frail girl from Habra had been brought to the city by the schoolteacher who promised her parents she would make sure Rozina had a better life. In West Bengal, most children who work as domestic labour are from Sandeshkhali and other remote regions of the Sundarbans/South 24-parganas and Midnapore districts. Every family has on an average five children to fend for. Lack of development, limited agricultural yields owing to salinity, and fewmeans of livelihood have all contributed to a situation where “every addition to the family is viewed by parents as an additional source of income,” as Hriday Chand Ghosh, programme coordinator of Save the Children’s CDW project in Sandeshkhali, puts it. As a result, there is a steady supply of child labour from these parts.
The girl child is particularly vulnerable, as Ghosh points out, with nearly every family sending girls to earn in the city. Consequently, 84 per cent of child domestic workers in Kolkata are girls, while 99 per cent of those working in Delhi -- a large number of female domestic workers are from West Bengal – are girls. Of these, many get trafficked by agents into the red light areas of cities. Apprehending the culprits is a tough task since parents are often actively involved in the deal. “We only get to know when a complaint is lodged by parents three or four months after the transaction has been completed. This again happens only when they do not receive the amount agreed on from the particular agent,” says Sandeshkhali Police Station Officer-in-Charge Gautam Mitra, who has rescued 15 girls from the clutches of these ‘agents’ and restored them to their families within one and a half years of his posting here. “I do not know how long they will be kept with their families.
If a girl is prevented from being sold in Kolkata, the parents collude with agents to sell her off in Delhi or Mumbai. The main culprit is poverty.” The right level of coordination between concerned government departments is imperative for legislation to take effect, says Manabendra Nath Roy of Save the Children. “I had suggested the formation of local committees with representatives from NGOs, panchayat pradhans, the Block Development Officer, OCs, actively participating. But this has yet to be done,” says Mitra. However, an awareness generation programme is underway since December last in Sandeshkhali Blocks I and II, as also the adjoining blocks of Basanti, Mirakha and Hasnabad. Meanwhile, Save the Children and Right Track, its partner NGO, have adopted a more subtle approach to reach out to these children. Right Track has persuaded some employers to let them off for a couple of hours. The domestic workers use the time to visit drop-in centres in Behala, Gol Park and other parts of South Kolkata, where they learn to read and write, embroider, dance and act. Right Track has managed to get many of these children, who are school dropouts, readmitted into regular schools.
The children also undergo personal safety lessons to save themselves from sexual abuse. They are informed about how they can get in touch with organisations like Childline, which runs a phone helpline, in an emergency. Many children have got back their childhood, with their parents going to work instead. Middle class families are often insensitive to the plight of poor children who are forced to slave for them. Like other employers, they take advantage of the child’s innocence, docility and helplessness, for their own ease and comfort. A massive awareness campaign by the police, NGOs and concerned citizens, along with punitive punishment, can force the middle class to mend its ways.
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