A half-day State Level Consultation with Government Departments, NGOs, Police, Media and other stakeholders washeld on 13 March 2008 at 10.00 AM at Prayas Institute of Juvenile Justice, 59 Tughlakabad Institutional Area, New Delhi in the presence of the Hon’ble Minister of Labour & Employment, Shri Oscar Fernandes. The meeting was enriched with the presence of esteemed guests who were introduced by Mr. Amod K Kanth, General Secretary, and Prayas.The background of the consultation being that the issue of child labour cuts across policy boundaries besides being the cause and consequence of poverty and migration coupled with inaccessibility to education and under / unemployment of adults. Field experiences and action studies have vividly brought out the links between child labour and deprivation, gender inequality, distressful migration to urban slums, food insecurity and poor governance vis-à-vis socio -systemic failure of the service delivery systems. The Ministry of Labour & Empowerment, Government of India has admitted that the magnitude of child labour has gone up from 11.59 million in 1991 to 12.66 million in 2001 (Census 2001). Unofficial sources, however, place this figure to atleast 25-30 million child workers, a significant number of whom are in domestic and migrant labour which was not covered within the census. In the absence of an integrated and coordinated system of rescue, repatriation and rehabilitation, child labour in urban areas comprises some of the worst sufferers. The Government has taken several key policy decisions to address the issue of the recently banned forms of child labour. This is vital in the larger context of economic rehabilitation of families as well. It is also important in relation to vocational education and integrated programmes under the 11th Five Year Plan. In its mission to eliminate child labour in a time bound manner, the Ministry rightly looks upto the partnership with civil society organizations. Many of us have been working closely with the stakeholders, ILO, MoL&E and the Labour Department, Govt. of NCT Delhi through multiple action-based projects under NCLP and INDUS.

Addressing the State Consultation organized by Prayas Institute of Juvenile Justice to the Government departments, NGOs, Police, Media and other stakeholders, Shri Oscar Fernandes, Union Labour & Employment Minister asked the State Government specially Labour and Women & Child Development Departments to take up child labour issues seriously and work out a monitorable action plan for implementation. He invited Prayas to support the Ministry in working out a mechanism and discuss implementation issues in a separate meeting in the first week of April 2008. The Minister acknowledges the role of civil society in implementation of schemes of the Ministry and he was particularly impressed with the integrated model of child labour elimination programme of Prayas. Senior officers from Delhi Government, the Labour Commissioner, Mr. Chandra Bhusan Kumar shared his department’s efforts. Mrs. Rashmi Singh, Joint Director, Department of Women and Child Development, and OSD to Chief Minister for Convergence Services, GNCT Delhi presented a convergent model of the Government to address social sector issues. The Delhi Government will soon come out with a child centric action plan as its commitment given in the Delhi Development Goals / Delhi Human Development Report. She sought support NGOs in developing operational manual of the convergence model to make Delhi a child labour free city. Mr. Rajib K. Haldar, Executive Director, Prayas invited the attention of Hon’ble Minister of pro-active engagement of civil society organizations in the national advisory committee as well as monitoring system for effective delivery of services in the 11th FYP. He concluded by summing up the consultation stating that the consultation was an different and unique in terms of achieving some tangible outcome of action plan for central-citystate- NGOs to follow. He thanked everyone for valuable suggestions and Prayas offered to facilitate a process of dialogue with the Hon’ble Minister.