Ending Child Labour

TODAY’S children are tomorrow’s citizens of the nation. The country’s future lies on how children are brought up today. Children constitute more than 40 per cent of the country’s population. However, the present condition of children in Nepal is not very satisfactory. There are about 2.6 million child labourers, Of them, 1.7 million are engaged in the worst forms of labour. These children are deprived of their basic child rights. Thus, child labour has become one of the serious social problems in Nepal. Until a decade ago, child labour was not regarded as a national problem. Now, it has been accepted as one of the national issues. As such the government has expressed its strong commitment to end child labour and has already ratified UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and several other international human rights related instruments expressing its clear-cut commitment to eliminate child labour in Nepal. In accordance with its commitment, it has adopted policies and programmes for its elimination. The Children’s Act and Children’s Regulations have already been enacted, that prohibit employment of children under 14 years. Similarly, the government has launched some programmes for the rights and welfare of children. Likewise, some non-governmental organisations are also active in the field of child rights and the donor agencies have expressed their concern and supported Nepal for ending child labour. ILO seems to be in the forefront in this field. It has been supporting the government as well as non-government organisations to fight against it. One of the major causes of child labour is massive poverty. Parents are compelled to send their children to work instead of sending them to school. As poverty is the main cause efforts need to be directed to attack poverty in order to end child labour. Poverty is so massive and acute that it cannot be eradicated overnight and so is the child labour. ILO has now implemented programmes in several countries to first end the worst forms of child labour and then gradually eliminate it as a whole, which seems very pragmatic. Nepal is one of the countries ILO has chosen for its programme to end the worst form of child labour. Child labour is thus a stumbling block for tomorrow’s social and economic development of the nation and needs to be discouraged and eliminated, for which cooperation from all sector is highly needed.

Other Sources

LACK of economic activities and the resultant poverty in Nepal can to a large degree be attributed to the acute energy deficiency it suffers from. When energy is missing, so is any significant enterprise. Communities or individuals may have all the necessary prerequisites required to start a livelihood venture, but non-existence of energy source to power the venture makes it a non-starter. In contrast, the arrival of electricity to a sleepy corner of the country has been seen to set off all sorts of economic activities, with people engaging in different schemes to supplement income. There are numerous instances of a village economy turning healthy on account of it being electrified. But decades of electricity expansion still have not covered more than 20 per cent of the Nepalese. Nepal is still predominantly a fuelwood-consuming country where over 80 per cent of the people depend on the forests for their energy needs. In recent years hydel has caught on some speed. But notwithstanding the increased pace, it will be a long time before Nepal’s energy needs reach anywhere near fulfilment. One fact to consider in electricity consumption is the high tariff rates. Electricity availability would not automatically mean its consumption as income levels of Nepalese would be a prohibiting factor. In the meantime, trees will continue to get chopped for meeting energy requirements. The situation needs not be this bad, if enough energy is put by energy planners and policy-makers into promoting alternative sources of energy.

Though much lip-service has been bestowed on development and encouragement of alternative energy, the fact of the matter is that very little progress has been achieved in this area. Most Nepalese continue to rely on fuelwood for meeting their energy needs. Alternative sources of energy like wind and solar have not been given real, earnest attention. Between the two, solar energy has moved farther in the scheme of things. But it still lacks policies that actively promote it. Regarding wind energy, many studies have pointed to its viability in many hilly areas of Nepal. But wind turbines are still an extreme rarity. With a burgeoning population and the need to increase economic activities more than ever, the government must pay more attention to giving a shot-in-the-arm to alternative energy promotion in rural areas, be it through special matching grants interwoven in other development schemes.