Govt deposits Rs29.75 lakh in 18 years against Rs12.58 crore it should have
Gandhinagar: While the Gujarat government has been making tall claims about its child welfare initiatives during the school enrollment drives and on other such occasions, it has not contributed even a single rupee for the welfare of child labourers freed from violators of the law during the last twelve years.
According to the guidelines framed by the Supreme Court for the rehabilitation of child labourers, the government has to either employ one adult member from the family of a rescued child labourer or contribute Rs5,000 to the Child Labour Rehabilitation-cum-Welfare Fund for each child. According to the figures obtained from the labour commission, a total of 5,071 child labourers were freed in Gujarat between 1997 and 2014. But the state government has provided employment to only 183 adult persons from these children’s families.