Kerala to ban child-labour: Minister

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Labour Minister Babu Divakaran today said the state government was planning to introduce a new Act, seeking to ban child labour in the state.

Talking to mediapersons here, he said as per the proposed Act no child below the age of 14 years should be engaged in jobs.

Mr Divakaran said a proposal in this regard was at present with the Law Department to sort out certain technical details and that it was expected to be introduced in the next Assembly session.

He pointed out that as per the guidelines of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), children below the age of 14 years should not be engaged in hazardous jobs and so far no such cases had been reported from the state.

Steps would be taken to check the migration of labourers from neighbouring state, he said, adding that a statistics would be taken about the volume of labourers who had migrated to the state.

According to the available report, more than eight lakh labourers from outside were working in Kerala, he said, adding that though there was a provision that migrant labourers, if comprising a 20-member group, should be registered in the state, nobody had made such registration so far.