Children - Terre des Hommes

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in the mine sites ekeing out a living as daily wage labour.
This calls for a review of the process of resettlement and
compensation.
A teenage boy interviewed, stated that he has been working
in the mines from the age of 10 and he now gets a daily
wage of Rs.70. The stone quarry near Gandhigram village
provided evidence of child and adolescent labour. The boys,
who were around 17 years of age, explained that they work
under a contractor who pays them Rs.35–40 for one piece of
stone broken. The boys earn, on an average, Rs.70–100 per
day and the material, to their understanding, is sent to the
states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan and to the city
of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. They reported that working
hours vary from contractor to contractor, but on an average,
each boy works for 10 hours daily. All the boys interviewed
belonged to the Gond tribe and they have been working for
a few years now.
there are atleast 5–10 times more illegal mines than legal
ones.
According to these Gond families who work in the mines as
contract labour, the wages are very low. The men are paid
Rs.50–60 per day and the women get Rs.40. They also
clearly stated that there are many children working as labour
in diamond mining. While most of the women take their
infants with them to work, the children start taking part in
the mining activities from the age of 10. The women informed
that young boys go as deep as 70 ft underground, into the
mine pits in search of diamonds, sometimes for 8–10 hours
at a stretch. According to villagers of Dharampur there are
more than 500 children (age group 10–16 years) working
in illegal mining activities in Dharampur and surrounding
areas. As children are cheap labour for the contractors, they
are hired to work in the mines. The women said that majority
of the child labour are also girls who start working from the
age of 12–14 to supplement the family wages.
In one of the diamond mines visited by us, six children were
found working with their families. Four of the children were
below 12 years of age and were helping the adults throw the
soil away. The parents stated that the children are enrolled
in school but they work for half a day in the mines and
also attend school in the afternoon. When questioned, the
children said that they do not have money to buy notebooks
and they fear the wrath of the teacher, so they preferred to
accompany their mothers to work.
Young boys digging for diamonds (Photo August 2009)
Chainsingh Dharampur is an example of the nature of
diamond mining taking place in Panna district. It is village
of Gonds, close to the diamond mines of many private
contractors who explore for diamonds illegally. In a meeting
held in the village during the field visit, which was attended
by about 19 Gond families, they complained that, on the
one hand, government is allotting small areas (25x25 ft)
for mining leases to private contractors, and on the other
hand, non-adivasi local people were lured by the contractors
to give their land informally on lease for diamond mining
activities. The contractors pay them around 10 per cent of
their profit for this land. Therefore, it is spreading like rathole
mining in the whole area with agriculture and forest
land being seriously affected. The women complained that
earlier they could work as agricultural labourers, but now
there is no work. The people here also complained that most
of the illegal mining is happening in forest land and that
In Hardua village that is home to 30 Gond families, around
12 families participated in the group discussion we held
regarding the diamond mining activities. None of these
families have land and all of them are dependent either on
mining, which takes place for 4–5 months in a year, and
the rest of the year they either sell wood from the forest
Malnourished and out-of-school, children of mine workers in Panna
(Photo August 2009)