I, Dhanalakshmi, 13 years old, a school dropout, lost my father when I was 9 years old. I shouldered the responsibility of the family along with my mother as a domestic child labour in the house of a money-lender, to clear the debt made by my father's illness and funeral ceremony. I have been working since four years, yet the debt has not been cleared. Every morning before six I go to work and return by 9 in the night. I am treated very badly, beaten and physically abused every time I’m caught working slowly or talking to other children. ’We don’t have money …, we will never have money' says Dhanalaskmi.
‘It is a pity to the situation of children’. In spite of the UN convention, on Child Rights and Legislations, the desired changes in the lives of millions of children worldwide have not been achieved.
Child Rights Advocacy Foundation (CRAF) in collaboration with Forum for Child Rights Vijayawada and National Domestic Workers Movement (NDWM) launched a year-long campaign on the Third World Day (June 12th, 2004) at Sidhartha Auditorium Moghalrajpuram, Vijayawada, against Child Labour. The District Collector Sri. K. Prabhakar Reddy, IAS has shown keen interest on the World Day against Child Labour. He has called for a meeting, on June 12th, with all the Secretaries / Office Bearers of Committees of Apartments & Housing Colonies in Vijayawada to discuss on the action plan for the elimination of domestic child labour.
The Vijayawada Municipal Commissioner Smt. V. Usha Rani, IAS has joined the campaign by issuing a notice to all the Apartment Committees in Vijayawada to allow campaigners to display propaganda materials like posters, pamphlets etc. in the respective apartments.
It will be a shame on us if we do not raise our voices against domestic child labour in our own areas.
‘Let the children go to school and not to servitude!’.
In solidarity
- Gode Prasad (CRAF)
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