On Thursday evening, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), a non-governmental organisation, conducted a raid and rescue operation along with the labour department and Delhi Police and rescued three children in the process.
Children, aged between 10 and 15 years, were rescued from a canteen of an institute run by the ministry of health and family welfare, where they were allegedly working as child labourers after being trafficked from Bihar earlier this year.
On Thursday evening, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), a non-governmental organisation, conducted a raid and rescue operation along with the labour department and Delhi Police and rescued three children in the process.
The raid was carried at three eateries in Civil Lines area after authorities received a tip-off from a 'concerned citizen'. One of the places to be raided turned out to be a canteen in National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
Officials of the BBA said that the NCDC is a joint collaboration between the ministry of health and family Welfare and the US department of health and human service, represented by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The government of India is represented by NCDC in the collaboration.
It was revealed that the rescued victims of child labour were not even paid one third of the amount they were promised and were made to work for 12 hours a day with no breaks.
According to BBA one of the rescued kid, a resident of Madhubani in Bihar, was brought to Delhi by one of the natives of his village on the pretext of getting him a job. "He was studying in his school when he was trafficked. He told us that he had come to study and earn some money to be able to pay off the medical bills of his ailing brother back in Madhubani," said Rakesh Singer, project director, BBA. According to him the boy used to cook, clean tables, do the dishes and serve food to the entire office. Officials also said that NCDC had its own stringent rules for watching who enters and exits the office.
"The operation was not easy to carry out, the identification of the victims itself took up a lot of time. Some of the people in the office came to us to ask our whereabouts and accused us for taking away their worker" said an activist of BBA who was a part of the raid conducted on Thursday.
The victims were all immediately produced before CWC, Kingsway Camp after which they were taken to BBA's transitory rehabilitation centre -- MuktiAshram.
The complaint has been made against the contractor of the canteen under section 370 of the IPC, 23 and 26 of the Juvenile Justice Act and section 16 of Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act.
Officials speaking to dna said that it was 'extremely unfortunate to see government-run institutions breaking laws so brazenly. "We suspect that there are many more such cases and we will be launching a crackdown on such institutions," said the official.
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