The Hindu : Karnataka News : Efforts on to make State child-labour free: Sait

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 14, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

Efforts on to make State child-labour free: Sait

By Our Staff Correspondent

MADIKERI, AUG. 13. The Minister of State for Labour and Haj, Tanvir Sait, said on Friday that efforts were on to make Karnataka a child-labour free State by 2007.

Addressing presspersons here, he said eradicating child labour was not a time-bound programme. It had to be monitored continuously.

The Department of Labour would be re-organised soon to give it more teeth to deal with child labour. The department would open labour courts in all districts, he said.

Mr. Sait, who agreed to a suggestion that new methods should be adopted to deal with child labour effectively, said certain technical reasons delayed justice to the victims and their parents. Non-cooperation on the part of the parents was one of the reasons.

On children being employed as domestic help, Mr. Sait said they too were covered under the Child Labour Act. Karnataka was the only State that had fixed a minimum wage for such workers aged above 14.

He said that it was the only State to rope in the services of 19 government departments to deal with the problem of child labour.

Revision

The Minister said that the "retention wage" scheme that ensured work round the year for those engaged in coffee curing would be revised soon. The last revision was conducted in 2001, which was Rs. 415 for each labour a month. Under the scheme, the employer had to give wages for a minimum of three months to his employees during off-season. A tripartite agreement would be entered into between the Government, owners of coffee curing units, and the labour union.

Appeal

Earlier, the President of the Kodagu Zilla Panchayat, Chitra Ramesh, appealed to Mr. Sait to take steps to establish cottage industries in the district.

The former vice-chairman of the Coffee Board, Bose Mandanna, said though plantation owners paid higher wages to workers, they faced problems due the fall in prices of coffee.

Bhavanishankar, general manager, Tata Coffee Ltd., said abolition of concessions for captive power generation and the increase in sales tax would further burden the plantation industry.

Ganesh Aiyanna, president of the local hoteliers' association, said many hotels were on the verge of closure as subsidies promised to them had not been given.

Mr. Sait said that he would take up these grievances with the Government. On the issue of variable dearness allowance which was in court, he said either he would go in for an out-of-court settlement or await the decision of the court.

He would strive for special packages for Kodagu and Mysore districts keeping in view their rich cultural heritage.

The Deputy Commissioner, Srikant Valagad, and the Deputy Labour Commissioner, J.T. Jinkalappa, were present.

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