Mindst 350 børnearbejdere, der sled for en ussel løn op til 12 timer i døgnet, er befriet fra fabrikker i det sydlige Indien. Det drejer sig især om garverier og plastic-fabrikker i storbyen Hyderabad, hvor børnene blev fjernet over en 10-dages periode.
The authorities said five men had been accused of supplying the young people to factory owners, BBC online reports Thursday.
Child welfare officials accompanied some of the children on Thursday as they were reunited with their parents in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states.
Police official V Satyanarayana revealed several of the rescued children were suffering from skin problems and other diseases. “They were forced to work for nearly 12 hours a day without any respite”, he said.
The children were kept in unhygienic and unventilated dark rooms and monitored by their employers using video cameras. Any child who stopped working would be beaten, he said.
In 2012 the employment of children under the age of 14 became illegal – thanks in part to the work of activist Kailash Satyarthi who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 2014 – se også telegrammet http://www.u-landsnyt.dk/nyhed/10-12-14/bev-gende-nobel-tale-af-manden-der-har-reddet-8000
But India still has millions of child workers – a 2011 census put the number at about 4.35 million. Mr Satyarthi says it is as high as 60 million.
Many parents say poverty forces them to send their children to work in other people’s homes or in factories.
One child goes missing every eight minutes in India and nearly half of them are never found.
A labour welfare official said raids on factories to check for child workers will now be carried out twice a month.
