Reclaiming lost childhoods: Odisha Police to hold brick kiln owners accountable Premium

Brick kiln owners must provide local police with list of all migrant worker children at their sites under new strictures; apart from ending child labour, they must provide creches and ensure school admissions

At hundreds of brick kilns across the country, young children can be seen working alongside their migrant worker parents, laboriously turning over the raw bricks drying under the merciless sun, losing their childhoods for a life of drudgery. In the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack area, however, the local police are now imposing a new ‘code of conduct’ to hold brick kiln owners accountable for ensuring the children are removed from their worksites and admitted to school.

In the four stages of brick-making — soil preparation, molding, drying and burning — children play a critical role in the third stage. Within the industry, it is argued that this job cannot be undertaken by adult men and women, as they cannot step on the raw bricks which would crumble under the pressure of their weight.

“On an average, a group of three persons can mold around 1,000 to 1,200 bricks a day and spread the bricks on the ground for sun baking. Now, the work of a child is very important to flip these 1,000 bricks twice a day under testing conditions,” said Umi Daniel, head of the migration unit of Aide et Action, an international non-governmental organisation which is collaborating with UNICEF and the State government to implement the programme.

Despite the fact that child labour is banned and the right to education is guaranteed, brick kilns have long ignored the law, with inadequate enforcement by the Labour department and others. Now, the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack police commissionerate, whose primary responsibility is to maintain law and order and apprehend criminals, has stepped in, taking up the additional task of collaborating with the Labour, School and Mass Education, and Women and Child Development departments to ensure that essential entitlements reach these marginalised communities.

There are about 60 major brick kilns around Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. Children often undertake the annual migration to these kilns along with their parents. According to an Aide et Action estimate, about 30% of people present at the worksites are children aged between 6 and 18 years. At the time of recruitment of labour, if a family do not have any young children to join in the work, they often hire a young boy or girl from the families of relatives or neighbours for a six to eight month period, paying them a paltry amount to participate in the drying activity, Mr. Daniel explained. These children are rarely sent to school, missing out on an education as they join the labour force at a very tender age.

The Bhubaneswar-Cuttack police have now chalked out a plan to ensure that all children are admitted to schools. “We have asked all brick kiln owners to provide a list of children living with their parents, who have been hired for brick making, to their nearest police stations within 15 days,” said Soumendra Priyadarshi, Commissioner of Police for the twin cities.

Mr. Priyadarshi said that a code of conduct was being finalised by experts under which brick kiln operators would be held responsible to make basic services available to these marginalised populations at the worksites itself.