Child Labour refers to the practise of using young children in factories, but it is increasingly used to refer to the employment of minors in general, particularly in jobs that may interfere with their education or threaten their health. Children have always worked alongside their parents in the fields, the marketplace, and around the home as soon as they were old enough to accomplish simple tasks. Child labour is not a new occurrence, nor is it limited to a single state.

Facts and myth about child labour– Employers are thought to obligate children by hiring them. However, the fact is that employers are simply concerned with profit, and child labour can be exploited at no cost to them. Many industries rely significantly on child labour because children are willing to work for little or no pay and for extended periods of time without complaining. Industries such as bead manufacturing, glass manufacturing, carpet manufacturing, gem and stone polishing, matches, and fireworks have grown solely on the power of young labour. There is a vested interest in the recruitment of underage labourers since it benefits them. The main cause is low salaries. Which employer prefers a child above an adult. Poverty is NOT an option. These statistics reveal that the vast majority of children employed in these businesses are from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, or Other Backward Castes.

Second, while it is true that child labourers come from impoverished families, it should be noted that child labour also perpetuates poverty because the child labourer who survives the harsh conditions becomes an unskilled adult who is not employed even in the industry that previously exploited him or her. Furthermore, child employees are paid a pittance or receive no pay at all. Child labour also lowers adult salaries and keeps adults out of work. Third, some people believe that if youngsters labour, they will be equipped with skills for the future. When we look at the facts, we can see that the activities assigned to child labourers, such as labelling, filling, and transporting, are simple and repetitive. By doing these exercises, youngsters are not so much learning a skill as they are being subjected to gruelling, monotonous work. Furthermore, the job done by young labourers jeopardises their prospects. Children’s health is harmed by exposure to the elements, dust, harmful gases, and chemical solutions, which shortens their lives. Some people believe that children work faster and have nimble fingers, which are required for certain types of work, particularly knotting carpets, but it is a myth that child labour is necessary and that children are capable of weaving better carpets than adults, but children were allegedly employed in simple tasks for which they had a special aptitude lost to adults. Adults were not only employed in all of these enterprises, but they outnumbered children in the studied units. Furthermore, their pace of physical production was higher than that of children.

Child labour is an International Problem– Child labour is still a major issue in many regions of the world in the early twenty-first century. According to research conducted during the International Year of the Child in 1979, more than 50 million children under the age of 15 were working in a variety of vocations, many of which were dangerous. Many of these youngsters reside in impoverished nations, where their living conditions are deplorable and their educational opportunities are limited. These families frequently lack the necessities of life, such as proper food, clothing, and shelter, as well as water for bathing. 20,000 children in India, for example, work 16-hour days in match factories. Child labour issues are not restricted to developing countries. They occur everywhere poverty exists in Europe and the United States. The most important efforts to reduce child labour abuses around the world are led by the INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION (ILO), which was created in 1919 and is now a special agency of the United Nations. Among its members, the organisation has implemented various child-labor conventions, including a minimum age of 16 years for admittance to all work, a higher minimum age for specialised categories of employment, mandatory medical examinations, and night work control. Slavery, prostitution, debt bondage, and forced military service were added to the list of the worst types of child labour by the ILO in the late twentieth century.

CONCLUSION– It is possible to infer that The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act is an Act that was passed in order to adopt all of the international standards against child labour that have been adopted by the United Nations. Furthermore, the Supreme Court’s explanation and analysis, as well as those of other courts, have made the Act a significant piece of legislation that has contributed to reducing the scourge of child labour to a bare minimum. Although a lot of laws have been enacted to prevent child labour, no law will be effective in eradicating the evil of child labour unless the laws are properly enforced and unless each and every individual does something to help in eradicating the problem aside from the application of the law.