“Every child counts…Over the last year, we have rescued more than 5,000 children from the streets of Hyderabad to enable them to regain their lost childhood”, says Leyla Tegmo-Reddy, ILO Director in New Delhi, India. The ILO’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) has been striving to rescue and rehabilitate migrant working children in the age group of 5 to 14 years, saving them from being trafficked or from getting involved in drugs and crime. ILO Online spoke with the ILO Director in New Delhi and Rani Kumudini who is the Project Manager in Hyderabad.
Keeping a sharp lookout around public places such as railway and bus stations has become a major task of the ILO project partners in this joint effort to identify newly-arrived unaccompanied children.
Fourteen-year old Romesh is one of the beneficiaries of the Andhra Pradesh State Based Project for the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO/IPEC-GOAP Project). He left his single mother and three younger sisters back in Bihar and travelled clandestinely for hundreds of miles by train to search for a new future in Hyderabad, one of the major cyber centres of India.
On arrival, he soon realized that the streets were not paved with gold and that making a living was not easy. He joined a group of ragpickers, starting work at the crack of dawn and toiling through until late evening, only to earn a mere Rs. 10 a day (US$0.25).
See full Press Release.
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