Due to abject poverty of their family, small children from districts adjoining the capital have been compelled to work at the homes of the well-off families in the capital.
"We have decided to launch rescue operations before the National Child Rights Day," said Pradeep Dongol, a child right officer at Children-Women in Social Service and Human Rights (CWISH). "We will start from the homes of government employees." The National Child Rights Day falls on September 14. [break]
The organization, which advocates the rights of children and women, said that it has prepared a list of government employees who have kept children as domestic helps and denying them basic rights. Dongol claimed that dozens of small children have been serving bureaucrats despite the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 2000, prohibits government officials from keeping underage domestic helps.
Many of such children are deprived of education. "The families with both spouses employed usually do not send domestic helps to school. They admit the child workers in schools in name only as they do not send them to school regularly," he added. He said that even those who run or work at NGO´s keep domestic helps, depriving them of their basic rights.
A study conducted by International Labor Organization (ILO) on 2003 estimated that about 21,000 domestic helps have been working in the capital.
Several studies have divulged that such children have been denied even their basic rights.
In some instances, underage domestic servants have become victims of sexual abuses. Dongol said that most of the children rescued in the past complained that they suffered excessive torture from master´s hand. The organization in the past had also launched a campaign to reunite domestic helps with their families.
Related story
Child labour, child marriage still rife in Dang
