Bangalore: In what is tantamount to admitting its inability to implement the State's `Action Plan to Eliminate Child Labour' within the envisaged six years ending in March 2007, the Labour Department has written to the Government seeking a five-year extension to achieve the task.

Sources in the Government told The Hindu that the request, which will allow the department to implement the plan launched in 2001 by 2012, has been forwarded by Labour Minister Iqbal Ansari to the State Cabinet for approval.

With the action plan involving a substantial outlay, including funds to run 30 residential State Child Labour Project (SCLP) schools, the concurrence of the Finance Department has also been sought.

The Labour Department has also requested that the Action Plan to Eliminate Child Labour be synchronised with action plans of the Women and Child Development Department.

The action plan, which was launched with much fanfare by the S.M. Krishna government in 2001, optimistically referred to making Karnataka a child-labour free State in six years.

The plan also hoped to target all out-of-school children below the age of 14 and rescue those being employed and house them in residential schools like those run by the SCLP, voluntary agencies and the community.

Lack of funds

But most of the aims of the action plan remain on paper. Officials in the Labour Department said lack of funds was the biggest bugbear.

The State Government, which had promised Rs. 5 crore every year for the duration of the six-year project, sanctioned only Rs. 8 crore.

According to Labour Commissioner K.S. Manjunath, though much needs to be done, the action plan has not only spread awareness about child labour but also brought down the incidence of children being employed.

`Social problem'

He expressed the view that child labour is "a social problem which cannot be tackled by drawing up timeframes to eradicate it," and that the Labour Department was, at best, "an enforcement agency and catalyst."

Though the Labour Department has not undertaken any survey to ascertain how many children in the State are being employed, officials in the Labour Department cite the figure of their counterparts in the Education Department, which, after a recent survey, identified the number of out-of-school children less than 14 years at 78,000.

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