Rally organized to mark World Day against Child Labour

Kathmandu, June 12: A rally was organized here this morning on the occasion of the World Day against Child Labour.

The rally was organized by some 35 organizations including the Department of Labour, the Nepal Trade Union Federation, the Environment Conservation Committee, the Ward Level Child Protection Committees and the Baneshwar Child Protection Committee. Among others.

The main purpose of holding the rally was to raise and spread public awareness that children below 14 years of age should not be made to work as labourers, according to the organizers. The rally was organized under the slogan of Let's End Child Labour at Home.

The rally started from the Bhadrakali Temple and turned into a corner assembly upon reaching Basantapur. It passed through Sahid Gate, Sundhara and Naya Sadak before reaching Basantapur.

The participants of the rally carried placards with slogans like 'Give Me Education, Not Work', 'Let Us Free Children from Labour Exploitation', 'Let Us End Child Labour', and 'Let Us Socially Boycott Heinous Crime Like Keeping Child Labour', among others.

Inaugurating the rally, Chief Secretary Lilamani Poudyal called for banishing child labour at all places. 

The law forbids employing children below 14 years in any kind of work and those below 16 years in any kind of worse forms of labour and hazardous works.

The government has set the objective of abolishing child labour from the country until 2016 and all forms of child labour by 2020 in line with the commitment made by the international community in 2010. 

It is estimated that nearly 3.2 million children from five years to 15 years are working as labourers in the formal and informal sectors in Nepal. According to the Nepal Child Labour Report-2010, the number of child labourers in the country is 1.6 million and 621 thousand of them are involved in hazardous work. RSS