“Child Labour is injurious to the health of the Economy”

“Child Labour is injurious to the health of the Economy”

• Children are employed not just because of
•  parental poverty
• , illiteracy, ignorance
• , failure of development and
•  education programmes, 
• but quite essentially due to the fact that employers benefit immensely from child labour as children come across as the cheapest option sometimes even for free.

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• All work that is done by child labourers and the income  generated goes unaccounted in a country's economy.

• -----Studies reveal that  6 crore children assumingly work for approximately 200 days in a year on an average cost of Rs. 15 per child per day. This amounts to Rs. 18,000 crores in one year. Now, these 6 crore child labourers when substituted with 6 crores adult labourers would earn Rs. 1, 38,000 crores at minimal rate of an average floor wage of Rs. 115 per day per labourer for 200 days. This difference in the total earnings between the two scenarios works out to Rs. 1, 20,000 crores- which is solely a pool of black money.
• This is a straight profit of Rs. 1,20,000 crore, which is a significant loss to the economy. The employer(s) should have legally and ideally paid this sum to the worker(s) but the employer(s) instead choose to employ docile, underpaid and overworked child labourers.
• Part of this black money generated by employing child labour is used in bribing the law enforcement agencies and politicians. This is chronic corruption. This in turn leads to lax implementation of laws, i.e. poor or no inspection of the work premises, letting the employers Scott free with little or no penalties at all, etc. This subsequently propels child labour creating an unscrupulous vicious circle between child labour, black money and corruption.
•  In response to a question in the Parliament, the Government admitted that only 9% of employers of child labourers have so far been convicted since 2007. This conviction is in the form of a fine only. In spite of one year to three years imprisonment provisions in the laws related to Child Labour and Bonded Labour, unsurprisingly not even a single errant employer has been jailed so far.

SOURCE ---http://www.kailashsatyarthi.net/