Instances of child labour continue to be cause for concern in industrial sectors in Tirupur district, predominantly in the ‘textile production chain’, even as the hub remains a preferred job destination for juveniles/children.
The authorities have made repeated claims of execution of stringent measures to abolish child labour in industrial units over the past several years. But these efforts have not yielded high results at the field level if one goes by the available data. With the setting up of the office of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), a national-level movement fighting for the rights of the child, in Tirupur last year, more and more cases of child labour has come to the open. Since June 2012, the BBA volunteers, along with police officials and in some case revenue officials, had rescued 102 children from various industrial units. Of them, 42 were child labourers (i.e. below 14 years) and the remaining were juveniles (between 14 and 18 years) and bonded youth labourers.
