New Delhi (dpa) – Their hands roll cheap cigars when they should be turning the
pages of schoolbooks and their backs are bent over piles of matches when they
should be playing with kids of their own age.
Children in Tirunelveli in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu work at home
or in factories making matchsticks and bidis – the poor man’s cigarette – to
help their families make ends meet. Attending school here is a rarity.
In a small factory in this impoverished district Lily Grace, 15, sits on the
ground and prepares matchsticks so the heads can be coated with
chemicals.
“I have been working here for six years,” she says. She prepares some 30,000
matchsticks daily for 45 rupees (about one dollar). It’s a risky business and
children have suffered burns and accidents because of the combustible
chemicals.
Nowhere in the world are there so many child labourers as in India. Their
number is officially estimated at about 20 million although the practice is
officiallly outlawed.
But aid organizations speak of 40 to 50 million boys and girls who are being
obbed of their childhood by working in factories, as domestic servants or as
goatherders.
Of India’s one billion population, 235 million are children aged between five
and 14 and half these minors do not go to school.
Ayyammal Selvi, 10, is the quickest bidi-roller in her village and makes 24
rupees for 500 bidis.
She rolls them in her house along with her mother and siblings. The tobacco
dust triggers fits of coughing and many bidi-makers complain of lung
problems.
“We want our children to go to school. For that we need alternatives, good work
for ourselves,” says Arumugaswamy at a village gathering organized by the
Tirunelveli Social Service Society (TSSS).
The society is backed by the German nongovernmental organization Andheri Hilfe
and is to be showcased as a “project around the world” at this year’s Expo 2000
world’s fair in the German city of Hanover.
The villagers have suggested switching production to brushes and and coir fibre
which can also be produced at home like bidis but do not make the workers
sick.
They also want TSSS to help with the sales so that middlemen do not keep part
of their earnings as is the case with the bidi industry.
“The bidi agents would not be very happy with this,” says Father S. J.
Lawrence, director of the Catholic Church-supported TSSS.
The match industry barons are apparently unhappy when children are taken out of
their factories since they are “quick, cheap, and above all do not join trade
unions,” Lawrence says.
In northern India it is mainly the carpet and gem industries which exploit
children while in the south it is the matches, fireworks and bidi
producers.
TSSS must fight its battle against child labour on several fronts. With state
help it has been setting up schools where within few days the children are
proudly able to write their names on the blackboard.
It has also set up a home to provide refuge to street children and has even
taken to banking.
“Almost every family borrows money some time or other, either for a marriage or
for medical treatment,” Lawrence says. Loan sharks charge 120 per cent annual
interest, forcing people to enslave themselves and their children to pay back
the money.
“We have set up saving groups in the villages to break this vicious circle,”
the priest says.
TSSS is particularly proud of its professional schools where former child
workers learn a craft. Kaliraj, 17, connects a cable to an electric meter. “I
want to be an electrician and look for a job in the city,” he says.
Sasikala, 18, and other young girls are learning to operate a computer. Both
Kaliraj and Sasikala are hoping for a bright future in the job market.
Their prospects are quite good since those who have passed out of the TSSS
schools are in demand.
“These boys and girls become motivation to their parents. We are proving that
these young people are getting employed,” says Lawrence.
“We not only give them skill but also hope for their life,” says the priest.
