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| Child labourers toil on Diwali |
| For an estimated 10,000 children in Tripur, the heart of Tamil Nadu`s textile belt, Diwali means work and tighter deadlines.
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| INDIA
, 10-November-2007
0:35:44 AM |
| For most of us, Diwali is an occasion to burst crackers and to flaunt new clothes.
But in Tirupur, home to hundreds of textile units that run on the sweat of little ones, Diwali quite simply means more work.
For an estimated 10,000 children in Tripur, the heart of Tamil Nadu`s textile belt, Diwali means work and tighter deadlines.
Most of the children are school drop outs and sweat it out in local units for 10 to 12 hours everyday. Some of these units, activists say, indirectly take orders for the export market.
''Children are employed in local units that get orders and sub contracts for export units,'' said S Nambi, Convenor, Campaign Against Child Labour.
The girls work as hard as the boys but get paid Rs 50 for an eight hour shift as opposed to Rs 70 earned by boys for the same work.
Although the employers claim all their workers are above 18 but the children working are even less than the age of 13 and some of them have been working for almost four years.
Often it's a vicious cycle with many child labourers turning entrepreneurs one day and following the same exploitative practices. ''I started working when I was nine and used to get Rs four per shift,'' said Pandian, Manager, EVP Tex.
The pain of lost childhood gets more acute during festivals.
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