Tamil Nadu

SSA officials conduct training for Village Education Committees members

TAMBARAM: Members of the Village Education Committees (VEC) comprising presidents and elected representatives of urban and rural local bodies besides school heads are being trained on identifying, monitoring and admitting child labourers in alternative and regular schools in the southern suburbs of Chennai.

The commencement of this training recently signals the end of the two-year INDUS-SSA (India US - Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) programme aimed at identifying children aged below 14 and enrolling them in primary and middle schools. Another objective of the programme is to make members of the VEC accountable for those children in the school going age out of schools.

Funding for the INDUS Child Labour Project was provided by the US Department of Labour and the Central Government. Officials of SSA told The Hindu that the INDUS programme is under the direct control of the District Collector.

The pilot programme of INDUS was started in January 2006 in Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur, Tiruvannamalai, Namakkal and Virudhunagar districts that had a high incidence of child labour. The programme ended on November 30 this year, the officials said.

Over the past two years, surveys, rescue and rehabilitation programmes have resulted in several hundred children employed in industrial and hazardous units getting accommodated in Transitional Education Centres. The rescued children were taught in alternative education centres before being admitted to mainstream schools of the State.

SSA officials said that the decline in child labour in the past couple of years was an important factor for the decision to bring the curtains down on INDUS-SSA, while members of INDUS under the direct control of the District Collectors would continue to function as usual. It was now up to the VEC members to identify child labour and bring them under the school education fold.

The training programme, for members of nearly 150 VECs all over Tambaram Taluk (the southern suburbs of Chennai or the urban and rural wings of St. Thomas Mount Panchayat Union’s SSA) was organised to remind the elected representatives, school heads and teachers about their duties and responsibilities on ensuring universal school education.

The officials said that not many chiefs of urban and rural local bodies, who were presidents of VECs, turned up for the crucial programme. Of the six municipalities, the dozen-odd town panchayats and 25 village panchayats, only a handful of the urban and rural local bodies’ chiefs had volunteered to attend it.

Pointing out that the recent flooding was an important reason for the elected representatives to stay away from the training programme, officials were hopeful of bringing the levels of child labour prevalence to nil.

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