It’s not a happy Children’s Day for Bangalore's under-age domestic workers

As the country celebrates Children’s Day, Bangalore does not have much to cheer about. Of late, the city’s well-heeled are employing children to work as their domestic help. Furthermore, these children are subjected to physical and mental torture by their employers.

Activists fear this is a result of a widespread well-organised racket where children are trafficked to work as domestic helpers.

According to Childline, a national emergency phone outreach for children in distress and in need of care and protection, around 100 minors from across India are brought to Bangalore illegally every year to work as domestic help. Activists say the figure could be much higher as several cases go unreported.

Most of these minors are from poor families in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. “Every month, we get around 10 complaints of children working as domestic help in various posh localities of Bangalore.

Techies in Bangalore employ them and they subject young children to various kind of physical and mental torture,” says Nagasimha G Rao, nodal supervisor of Childline.

In fact, on November 10, Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) rescued a severely bruised 13-year-old girl, after receiving a call from a conscientious citizen in Hebbal.

The girl, a native of Chittaranjan in Jharkhand, told DNA that for almost a year, her employers, Saurabh and Kaka, heaped severe physical abuse on her. A similar incident shocked Bangalore in December 2009, when an Infosys techie, Pallabh Chakraborty, and his wife Sanchita, inflicted severe physical torture on their 14-year-old maid.

Rao says most of these children are brought to Bangalore illegally as employers do not possess any no-objection certificate signed by the children’s parents or government authorities.

However, activists expressed helplessness in rescuing these children. “Even if we rescue domestic help from the clutches of their employers, the children’s parents deny making their child work. They say the employers are related to them,” says KSCPCR member Vasudev Sharma.

Moreover, activists allege that the police, too, are helpless. The police personnel are not well-informed on the Juvenile Justice Act. Activists say when the police rescue children, they never report it to the child welfare committee.

However, child rights’ activists insist India has about five crore child labourers. It has been more than four years since child labour was banned in India. But the practice continues.

The notification on prohibition of employment of children as domestic help and in restaurants or roadside dhabas came into effect on October 10, 2006. Violators face jail for up to two years and a fine up to Rs20,000.

(Found a child in distress? Call Childline’s toll free
number 1098)