Over 30 lakh child labourers work in more than 60,000 kilns across the country

New Delhi, July 30: A National Convention for the rights of brick kiln workers was today organised at the Gandhi Peace Foundation here by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) to work out a strategy to form a Union of Kiln workers to fight for their rights.

Speaking at the Convention, Mr Kailash Satyarthi, Founder of BBA said, “Unlike Kiln owners, kiln workers from across the country should come together and form a union to fight for their rights.

Chairperson of BBA, Mr R S Chaurasia, suggested that these unions should be formed at various levels – district, town and city levels. These unions would coordinate with each other and with unions at the national level. This would help kiln workers achieve their targets in a systematic way.  

Kiln owners across the country have formed an All India Federation and are using it to pressurise the state governments as well as the centre to exclude kilns from the per view of Bonded Labours Act and Factories Act.

Favouring the formation of Union for Kiln workers, Satbir Singh of CITU suggested that the Union formed should emphasise on five major points:

• Work conditions in these Kilns are improved;
• A database of all kiln workers is maintained and regularly updated;
• Living conditions of kiln workers are checked and efforts made to improve it;
• Safety and social security of kiln workers and their families is taken care of; and
• Minimum wage decided for these kiln workers should be enough to fulfil the basic requirements of these workers and their families.

Other suggestion made at the Convention was that if kiln workers want their rights to be accorded to them in full strength, then they should fight for abolition of child labour from kilns as child labourers work on less than minimum wages for 10 to 12 hours each day.

According to official data, there are 60,000 registered kilns all over the contry and 3,000 labourers work in each kiln. According to another statistics from the Haryana Government, 20% of total work force in its kilns is child labourers. If we generalise the figure for whole country, then there are 30 lakh child labourers working in these kilns across the country, said Mr. Jai Singh, General Secretary, Brick Kiln workers association.

Other issues raised at the convention included fixing minimum wage not only on the basis of piece rate but also on time rate. 

Ram Dev Prasad, Chairperson, Bihar Bal Ayog, Sharmanand ji Gordiya, BBA’s representative from Chhattisgarh and S N Thakur, National Secretary, INTUC were among other prominent persons who attended the convention.