The Hindu : 27 bonded labourers rescued from U.P. sweet units

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 08, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

27 bonded labourers rescued from U.P. sweet units

By Ramya Kannan

Chennai April 7. Twenty-seven persons from Tamil Nadu, including 21 children, were rescued under exacting circumstances from sweet making units in Uttar Pradesh. Except for two children, the rest hail from villages in and around Usilampatti and Melur in Madurai district.

Armed with letters from the Bonded Labour Commissioner in Chennai, and the co-operation of the administration of Bareilly and Philibit districts, a team of activists from SOCO Trust, Madurai, rescued them.

Based on a complaint from one of the boys, Shanmugam, who escaped from a sweet factory in Bareilly, a petition was sent to the Madurai district Collector and then forwarded to the Bonded Labour Commissioner, PWC Davidar. A team comprising advocate Alagumani and social worker, Francis Xavier with SOCO Trust accompanied by Shanmugam left for Bareilly on March 27. With the support of the district Collector and the police force, a raid was conducted in Bareilly and 16 persons, inlcuding five members of one family, were rescued.

From Bareilly, they moved to Philibit, acting on a tip off from Kannusamy, the owner of the sweetmeat factory, who wanted to ensure that his unit was not the only one to be raided.

In transit in Chennai, before they were escorted home to Madurai, the erstwhile bonded labourers told sordid tales of abuse and torture at the units. Work began as early as 3 a.m. and would continue until nearly midnight, ceasing just for a few hours in between for meals. The boys were assigned tasks of preparing the sweets and had to work in small rooms with little or no ventilation. "We never had any break. Even for Diwali, they stopped work at 7 p.m. and then made us clean up the whole place. If we were ill or tired and could not work, they would beat us with a lathi", says Selvaraj, who has been working for two years in the Bareilly unit. They were shut inside the same room they worked in at night and prevented from leaving the premises.

The children from Philibit faced similar harassment at work--burn injuries were inflicted on them. Several of the children bear burn marks on their palms, forearms and feet, some of the burns sustained even during the production process. For instance, Senthil's palms have been seared completely as he has been forced to roll sweets in piping hot sugar syrup.

Most of the boys come from single parent families, living in impoverished circumstances in the villages. The families are mainly agricultural labourers, who have been put out of jobs by the drought. It is in these villages that the brokers campaign, promising the parents, huge sums of money as advance and as monthly salary. "The amounts that the brokers are paying as advance has also dropped drastically- because the parents are really desperate. You can now buy children for merely Rs. 500", Mr. Xavier says.

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