By IANS
Jaipur : As many as 115 children, about to be sent to neighbouring Gujarat to work in factories despite a legal ban on child labour, have been rescued thanks to a Rajasthan-based NGO.
The child labourers were rescued from Udaipur, about 500 km from here, Saturday by a team of the Dakshin Rajasthan Mazdoor Union, an advocacy group working for migrant labourers.
"These children were being taken to Gujarat for working in cotton factories," the NGO said in a statement.
Most of the children belong to poor tribal families.
"These children were rescued by us when they were being sent to cotton factories of Gujarat, especially in Ahmedabad and Disa," Meenakshi Paliwal, an official of the NGO, told IANS on phone on Monday.
According to a study by the union, at least 100,000 children from Rajasthan's tribal belt are employed in the cotton fields of Gujarat.
The study said that about 50 percent of the labourers employed in the cotton fields come from four tribal districts of south Rajasthan, Dungarpur, Banswara, Udaipur and Sirohi, which border Gujarat.
It also revealed that about 35 percent families there send their children for cotton works.
The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 bans employment of children below 14 years in specified fields which are considered unsafe and harmful to children.
However, the practice goes on uninhibited across the country.
On July 22, 11 child labourers from Jhadol block of Udaipur district were rescued by Udaipur-based Gandhi Manav Kalyan Society. These children too were being taken to Gujarat.