About six lakh child labour engaged in Northeast

Agartala, Mar 24 (UNI) As many as 5,63,026 children aged between 5 and 14 years, including 21,756 in Tripura, were found engaged in child labour activities in various sectors in NE states, National Child Labour Project (NCLP) Scheme estimated.

NCLP officials here today said National Plan of action for elimination of child labour includes project based plan of action covering families of child labour in general developmental programme and strict enforcement of the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 was launched in 250 districts of the country.

Considering the nature and magnitude of the problem, Centre has launched the project as per the population census 2001 following a sequential approach of first covering children working in hazardous occupations/processes.

Under the Scheme, children withdrawn from identified hazardous work were put into Special Schools, where they were provided with accelerated bridging education, vocational training, nutrition, stipend and health care facilities etc before they were brought into regular education system, the officials said.

The state-wise record in NE state as per Census 2001 was revealed that Assam was at the top of the list with 3,51416-child labour followed by Meghalaya 53,940, Nagaland 45,874 and Manipur 28,836 while the lowest number had been recorded in Sikkim 16,457 and Arunachal 18,482, they added.

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