Child-and-adult-labour-in-the-export-oriented-garment-and-gem-polishing-industry-of-India

Child and adult labour in the gem polishing export industry of Jaipur
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total number of 1,000 children (out of a bench mark of 15,000 child labourers) could be partly
weaned from the industry and be admitted to the 20 special schools. In 1991, 20% of these
thousand children was still found working in the gem polishing industry after school.
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6.10 Conclusions
The full-time child workers in the gem polishing export industry in Jaipur, whether working for
an employer or with their father, are economically exploited, deprived of (meaningful) education
and have no childhood in terms of play, leisure time and social life.
Employers have a vested interest in the cheap child labourers because they are much cheaper than
adults. On an average an employer pays an 8-year old child in his first year of employment a wage
which is 11% of the wage of an adult worker of 14 years of age as compared with 4% of the wage
which an adult worker earns if he is around 25 years of age. For a child who has already worked
for 1 to 3 years and is around 10 years of age, these percentages are 50% and 16%. Thus the
employer saves a lot of money if he employs children instead of adults, also when the children
have gained some experience.
The employers partly teach the child workers valuable skills. They use them under the pretext of
apprenticeship while paying the child labourers abysmally low wages and letting them work for
long hours per day, for many years. These employers, who started manufacturing units during the
last 1 to 6 years due to the increased international demand for gem stones, have a short-term
interest in cheap child labour.
Most of the fathers (parents) project their own hard working life on the life of their child(ren) in
future, which makes them decide that their child(ren) should learn a skill at a young age so that
they would earn a good wage at a young age. Some of these parents earn a reasonable amount of
money and have a choice to send their children to school instead to work. These parents do not
send their children into the industry for an additional income in the first place. But a combination
of a low judgement of the existing education facilities and their opinion that children should work
at a young age and get a better job than themselves, makes them decide to send their children to
the gem polishing industry. The increased wages of child labourers over the last 5 to 9 years, add
to the decision-making process of parents to send their children to the gem polishing industry.
The girl child is even more a case of concern as she has even less childhood than a boy, drops out
of school earlier and works inside the house the whole day whether it is work related to the gem
industry, household work or other employments.
The special schools and non-formal education, the core of the Government's action plan to
eradicate child labour from the gem industry, have hardly offered alternatives for child labourers
who like to play and learn some vocation also. Experts found that around 20% of the children
who had been admitted to the special school still were working in the gem polishing industry after
school. The aim to eliminate child labour from the gem polishing industry through the establishment
of 20 Special Schools and 50 poorly running non-formal education centres is unrealistic,