Delhi Police, CRY join hands against child labour, missing children

New Delhi, June 12 (IANS) On World Day Against Child Labour on Monday, the Delhi Police joined hands with an NGO to solve cases of missing children and to fight child labour, a senior police official said.

"Delhi Police have decided to share information with Child Rights and You (CRY) to locate missing children and also to conduct awareness programmes against child labour," Special Commissioner of Police Dependra Pathak said while addressing the media.

"It'll be a symbiotic relationship. CRY has a pan-India network and we can use it to locate missing children. We will help them with awareness against child labour and will also provide them information on it," Pathak told IANS.

CRY Director Vatsala Mamgain said: "Juvenile Welfare Officers of local police stations will be coming with us to ground level for awareness programmes on child labour."

Members of CRY said that awareness was extremely important for checking child labour.

"We tend to give money or buy things from children at traffic signals or in streets, but by doing so rather than helping them, we are harming them," CRY spokesperson Jaya Singh said.

"People should stop doing this. There is a nexus behind these children and they use children as they know that it's profitable. If people stop buying things from children, the nexus will break up of its own," Singh said.

Around 6 p.m, around 1,000 people including police personnel and citizens formed a human chain near India Gate to mark the beginning of the joint awareness programme against child labour.

India is home to more than 33 million working children below the age of 18, of whom 10.13 million are below 14 years. Also,the population of working children in India, of ages between five and nine years, increased by 37 per cent between 2001 and 2011, according to CRY.