Dungarpur (Rajasthan), April 30 (IANS) A total of 88 gram panchayat in the tribal belt of Dungarpur in Rajasthan have chalked out plans to make their areas free of child labour by November this year, an official said.
The panchayats in Dungarpur district, over 500 km from the state capital Jaipur, have resolved to attain ‘zero tolerance’ to child labour by Nov 30, said an official at a function held here to observe April 30 as the National Anti-Child Labour Day.
Rajasthan’s principal secretary of department of labour, Manohar Kant, and Rajasthan state chief- of Unicef Samuel Mawunganidze, joined Dungarpur District Collector Puran Chandra Kishan in launching a community leadership driven campaign against child labour.
The 2011 campaign in 88 panchayats with high burden of child labour and a high number of out-of-school children, builds upon the ‘Nanhe Haat Kalam Sena’ door to door community mobilization campaign launched by Chief Minister Ashok Ghelot in June 2010.
Launching the campaign, Kant said: ‘The community response in Dungarpur has been very encouraging and that is what has led us to believe that we can achieve the target of making Dungarpur child labour-free.’
The campaign using the local folk media and chaupals will be generating awareness, vigil among people and providing access to the vulnerable families to a number of social security schemes of the government.
Speaking on the occasion, Muwanganidze said that ‘this was a big opportunity in bringing child labour to levels of insignificance’.
