Children - Terre des Hommes

12is mandatory and this must be ensured from childrenrescued from labour in mines. health impacts on children living and working in miningareas and considering the high levels of environmentalpollution and occupational diseases as a result ofmining the Ministry needs to have delivery servicesthat will address critical child health and mortalityissues, especially related to pollution, contamination,toxicity, disappearance of resources like water bodiesthat have affected the nutrition and food security of thecommunities, etc. agreement and the Rehabilitation Plan should clearlyspecify the impacts on and plans for children which mustbegin before the mining project begins in a time-boundmanner. This includes decent and adequate housing withtoilet and Potable drinking water, good quality schoolswithin the rehabilitation/resettlement colony, electricity,anganwadi centre with supplementary nutrition topregnant women and single mothers, colleges, healthinstitutions, roads and transport. result in the cancellation of the lease. Penalties should bedefined for non-implementation of rehabilitation as perprojected plans and assessments with recommendationsmade by the monitoring committee.caused to children and their environment in the existingmines with a clear time frame which will be scrutinisedby the independent committee at regular intervals asagreed upon. The clean up should also state the budgetallocated by each company for this purpose and providedetails of expenditure incurred, to the committee. established so that it is not restricted to immediateshort term monetary relief, but should show longterm sustainability of the communities and workers,including post-mining land reclamation and livelihoodprogrammes that have measurable outputs. A sharefrom the taxes or profits shared by the companies shouldbe ploughed into institutions for children.clean up and institutional mechanisms are in place. Noprivate mining leases should be granted in the ScheduledAreas and the Samatha Judgement should be respectedin its true spirit. Sector which is proposing the new Social SecurityBill should take into cognizance, the above legal andpolicy recommendations, particularly with respect tothe migrant mine workers and include adequate socialsecurity benefits that directly support development andprotection of children.Overarching Recommendationsappropriate local governance institutions (district, block)and the community with clarity in terms of quantity andquality of ore that will be extracted, the extent of areainvolved, demographic profile of this region, economicplanning for extraction that includes number of workersrequired, nature of workers (local, migrant), type oftechnology, social cost including wages, estimate ofworkers and assured work period, providing (in the caseof migrant workers) residential facilities like housing,basic amenities like drinking water, electricity, earlychildhood care facilities, quality of education, toilet, PDSfacility and other requirements for a basic quality of life.The resources for these must not be drawn upon frompublic exchequer but recovered from the promoter.first clean up the situation and redress the destruction