Doing menial jobs for a measly wage

By Divya Sreedharan

BANGALORE, NOV. 16. They are visible signs of a world driven by economics. But for them, money saved is not money gained for, their childhood goes cheap, just for Rs. 500 or Rs. 600.

That is the average wage a young boy earns for washing plates, swabbing floors, clearing tables, and being the general dogsbody in any of the City's estimated 20,000 registered and unregistered hotels, eateries, shanties, and ``darshinis'' (the number includes ``upper-crust'' hotels but these generally do not employ children).

The term ``child'' here denotes any boy or girl under the age of 15. And Raghu is only one of the 60,000 other boys found working in such places.

Actually, children like Raghu present a problem. They are seen everywhere. As Dr. Kshitij Urs of the Association for Promoting Social Action (APSA) points out: ``Organisations run by the media, and even colleges also employ children (in their canteens etc). At the same time, child labour is something that is not as easily removed.''

A child works at a hotel/canteen partly because his family needs the money and ``also because working in a hotel gives him food and shelter.'' This can become dangerous too because the child sleeps in a room filled with adults and this can lead to his being abused.

Some times, a family member ``contracts'' the boy to a hotel owner. Dr. Urs said a child was handed over to a hotel owner for a year because the latter had paid the boy's brother Rs. 1,000.

Their pay ranges from Rs. 5 to Rs. 15 a day. This is one-fifth of what an adult can earn at the same hotel. And this despite the fact that these children play an important role. They have to keep the hotel clean, make it look attractive so that it will attract more customers.

``Hotel owners tell us that in Bangalore, food sells cheap. They employ child labour to break even,'' says Dr. Urs. According to him, the Child Labour Regulation Act, 1987 deals mainly with work in hazardous and non-hazardous sectors. ``But we feel the hazardous nature of work should be looked at from the child's perspective.''

Children in hotels work at least 12 to 14 hours a day. And most hotels employ between 5 and 20 children. They are given the dirtiest of jobs. ``They work in constant dampness and heat, they are always under nourished but have to lug around cauldrons of boiling water etc.'' If a boy is burnt or injured, the hotel owner takes no responsibility. In fact, he doesn't even acknowledge the child's presence. Here, the work is hazardous to the child even if the law doesn't see it that way.

Dr. Urs recalls an incident in 1993. ``Twenty-three boys were employed by a hotel in Kalasipalayam. The owner used to lock them up in the basement every day. The children were rescued and the hotel's licence withdrawn. Today, he has taken a licence in his wife's name and runs a hotel in the same area,'' he said.

A person found employing a child is supposed to be fined Rs. 20,000, but that has not happened, says Dr. Urs.

There are other laws too. The Minimum Wages Act says an adult woman must be paid Rs. 65 while an adult man should get Rs. 85. Hotel owners save about Rs. 80 if they employ a child instead. There are schemes for the working child: there is a National Child Labour Project, a Child Labour Rehabilitation Project, programmes for the girl child and others aimed at the children of prisoners and habitual offenders.

There are schemes aplenty just as there are Children's Day celebrations every year. Do all this really help children like Raghu?

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