Their Future Was A Brick Kiln, But Top Cop & NGO Ensure 800 Kids Bag a New Destiny
For nearly 800 children of brick kiln labourers from Western Odisha working in Telangana, the faint hope of accessing formal education has become a reality.
Thanks to the collective efforts of the Rachakonda Police Commissionerate, the District Collectors of Yadadri Bhuvanagiri and Rangareddy, the Brick Kiln Owners Association in Telangana and global non-profit Aide et Action, these children will now go back to their homes in Odisha in the upcoming academic year starting July and enroll in Odia-medium schools instead of getting caught in the vicious cycle of child labour.
With assistance from the Odisha government as well, these children can now aspire to break out of the poverty trap that has ensnared their parents.
In one such January 2017 operation near Choutuppal town in Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district, the police team rescued around 180 children working in brick kilns who were not going to school. Some of these children even had their parents working in the same kilns.
After this operation, the police immediately received a tip-off about another brick kiln factory employing children nearby. They rescued another 170 children who were reportedly being paid a measly Rs 10,000 for six months work.
Once these children are rescued, they are either sent back to their villages or reunited with their families. Since some of them were already living with their parents in small huts at the brick kiln worksite, the Commissioner began looking for an alternative to rehabilitate them.
Fortunately, Aide et Action already had the worksite-schools model in place, where it would bring teacher volunteers, either high school graduates or college dropouts, from the home districts of these migrant workers to teach them in Odia-medium.
Commissioner Bhagwat was the key conduit for the critical administrative support this initiative needed.
Posted by: Ravi Narasimhan <ravi.narasimhan.in@gmail.com>
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