By IANS,
New Delhi : More than half-a-million children below 18 years of age have been working under hazardous condition in cotton and vegetable fields in five western and southern Indian states, a report said Friday.
International Labour Rights Forum, Alliance 2015 Network of Development Organisations, and NGO India Committee of the Netherlands jointly surveyed Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra and released the report on the eve of World Day against Child Labour being observed Saturday.
The report said that over 230,000 of these children were below 14 years of age and working under impact of pesticides for long hours.
“They produce seeds on the land of small and marginal farmers, which multinational and Indian seed companies use to outsource their hybrid seed production,” a statement from the India Committee of the Netherlands said.
It said girls did around 75 percent of the work and were paid much less than men for the same work. “They often worked for longer hours,” the report said.
The report adds that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes members constitute majority of the workers in most states.