Annual Report - National Human Rights Commission

Scourge of Bonded Labour
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account for 82.03%, STs 4.31% and OBCs 14.4% of the total number. The proportion of landless
agricultural labourers is 82.47% for the 5 districts combined. Non-payment of minimum wages
was reported in almost 100% of the cases. The average level of illiteracy was 88.39%. 99% of
the rehabilitated bonded labourers belong to BPL families. However, the proportion of BPL
card holders amongst them ranges from 48.28 % in Nalanda to 84.11 % in Mungher.
9.31 49.82% of the rehabilitated bonded labourers had received the benefit of IAY. In Mungher
99.34% reported slight improvement in their financial condition, 100% reported betterment in
food consumption, 98.01% enhancement in social prestige and 100% reported increase in voting
activity after the release. In Patna 77.85% stated that they were free to work. 46.77% said that
there was no pressure and compulsion of work on them. 41.94% felt better than before.
Jharkhand
9.32 Vigilance Committees are now in place in all the Districts (22) and Sub-Divisional HQs
(35) of the State, which shows significant progress over the situation described in the last report.
However, the orders regarding the empowerment of Executive Magistrates to exercise the powers
of Judicial Magistrate u/s 21 of the Bonded Labour Act, have not yet been issued in Jharkhand
as was mentioned in the last report.
9.33 A total of 196 bonded labourers were required to be rehabilitated in the State in the period
of review for which an amount of Rs. 39.20 lakh was released to the D.Cs concerned. 185 of
these have actually been rehabilitated under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme and Rs. 37 lakh
utilized. The State has done commendably well in arranging rehabilitation of the released bonded
labourers detected and returned from U.P. Besides providing the package of rehabilitation under
the Centrally Sponsored Scheme, benefits of IAY and Social Security Pension have been extended
to almost all of them.
9.34 Utilization of a grant of Rs. 30 lakh for survey in 15 districts resulting in identification of
only one bonded labour was mentioned in the last Annual Report. The State has utilized the
grant of Rs. 10 lakh received from the Union Labour Ministry for awareness generation carefully
through the Public Relations Department by arranging publicity through the Newspapers, Nukkad
Nataks and Telecast of Audio-Video inputs through Doordarshan in accordance with the
guidelines of the Union Labour Ministry. The State has not availed of the grant of Rs. 5 lakh
offered by the Union Labour Ministry for Evaluation Studies.
C] Efforts in the States of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala
and Tamil Nadu.
9.35 Shri K R Venugopal IAS (Retd.), former Secretary to the Prime Minister, continued to
assist the National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi as its Special Rapporteur, Hyderabad
during the year under review.
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