Despite higher school enrolment, recent ILO studies confirm that the number of children worldwide in hazardous industry have shown a 20 per cent rise.
Children in the 15-17 age group working in hazardous industry, which includes mining and quarrying, handling chemicals, firework and working as child soldiers, have crossed the 62 million figure.
Even more alarmingly, from the 153 million child labourers in the 5-14 age bracket, one third — over 53 million — are doing hazardous work.
Girls continue to have a strong presence in the hazardous industry with the report highlighting that presently 74 million boys and 41 million girls are employed in hazardous industry.
India, Pakistan and Burma remain the hub of the child labour trade with India enjoying the dubious distinction of having the largest number of child labour in the world.
Global strategies for the eradication of child labour are not working with 215 million kids, at 14 per cent of the world’s population, at work.
The 215 million figure shows a modest decline of just three per cent from the earlier 2004-08 study with agriculture continuing to be the largest employer of children.
The only good news is that there has been a 15 per cent decline of girls in the work force with the ILO 2010 report ruing that the “world is not on track to achieve the goal of eliminating child labour in its worst form by 2016”.
National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights chairperson Shantha Sinha, speaking at a workshop organised by the ILO, decried that “there is no political will to end child labour”.
“There is a deep economic and political nexus within the country to perpetuate child labour,” Sinha said pointing out that although “there was rapid enrolment of children in schools, the bigger challenge was to retain these kids in schools. Only 22 per cent of these enrolled kids reached up to Class 10.