Don Bosco joins Pan-India Rescue and Rehabilitation Campaign
(MissionNewswire) The Don Bosco Network in India, part of BREADS – Bangalore Rural Education and Development Society – joined with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights in a nationwide campaign to combat child labor. The Pan-India Rescue and Rehabilitation Campaign 2.0, which ran from Jan. 10 to March 31, aimed to rescue and rehabilitate children working in hazardous environments.
In the Karnataka State, Don Bosco PYAR, along with officials from the railway police, rescued eight laborers ages 14-16 from the Gulbarga railway station limits. The youth were found barefoot and in torn clothes, working in a highly exploitative system. They are from a tribal community in Madhya Pradesh and were brought to the area by a contractor to work on railway track maintenance for more than 12 hours daily without enough food and a place to sleep. Those rescued were brought before the District Child Welfare Committee and admitted to a Boys Shelter Home. First Information Reports have been filed against those contractors and middlemen under various laws.
This team also rescued another 12 children under the Pan-India Rescue and Rehabilitation Campaign.
A Salesian explained, “The 12 girls are housed in a child labor center and preparations for their re-enrollment in school are underway while counseling and house visits are carried out to educate their parents about the need for sending children to school. Don Bosco Devadurga runs a home for the rescued girls, and through a bridge course program, they will be ready to join mainstream school education.”
In Devadurga Taluk, transport vehicles loaded with adults and children being taken to the fields for labor are a common sight. Youth are used as seasonal laborers, which means they lose significant time away from school and often end up dropping out because of the resulting learning gaps.
The Salesian added, “The Don Bosco team is vigilant during every harvest season to track and rescue child laborers. This year, they played an integral role in 16 raids on transport vehicles, rescuing 42 child laborers, 30 of whom were boys who are now re-enrolled to mainstream schools after a few motivational classes and counseling.”
Child labor is a complex systemic problem that requires multi-pronged efforts and collaboration to solve it. These interventions during the campaign reinforced the collective responsibility of government, non-government agencies, private agencies and individuals to eradicate child labor.