Children - Terre des Hommes

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Problems of Mine Workers’ Children
Since enitre families are brought to the mine site by the
contractors, both adults and children work in the quarries.
Both the husband and wife are working in the quarry the whole
day and have no opportunity to take care of their children.
Children grow up in the quarries and are therefore, exposed to
the heavy dust pollution from the mines and crushers. They are
vulnerable to mine accidents, blasting, and to noise pollution.
In most of the quarries, the mothers complained how the
children find it difficult to sleep at night due to the deafening
noise from the crushers that are continuously operating.
Child Labour and Education
Children start working alongside their parents from the
age of 7 years and get Rs.150 per day. Of the 269 children
covered in this survey, it was found that only 53 were enrolled
in school. However, the survey has limitations in data as the
age group covered in this survey are less than 14 years of age.
Majority of children who work in the mines are in the age
group of 14–18 and these children were not included. Small
girls as young as 6 and 7 years were also found working in
stone quarries. The women stated that, by the age of 12 or13
years the girls are married off by their fathers who select the
sons-in-law depending on the amount of liquor provided to
him. Therefore, young girls are completely bonded to mine
labour from a very young age in this region.
As the workers are from migrant families and the quarries
are located outside a village or town, the children have no
access to schools or anganwadis. The temporary nature of
the work also discourages the parents from finding a school
for their children, apart from the financial need to have extra
help at work from their children. Except for Galiveedu and
Chintakommadine, the other quarry sites have an average
of 20 children of different ages, and neither the institutional
structures of anganwadis nor primary schools exist for them.
None of these places were found to have NCLP schools
as they are scattered in numbers. Some of the children are
enrolled in their native villages, but as they are migrants, they
do not attend the school for long durations.
Social Problems that Aggravate the
Situation of Children
Mining being a hazardous activity, which requires heavy
physical labour, most of the workers are addicted to drugs
and alcohol. Discussions with the workers and particularly
with the women provided the study with the following
information. The mine owners escape from responsibility
towards the workers and their families on the pretext that
most of the wages are spent on liquor and drugs, and hence
the poverty of the mine workers is because of their social
habits. The migrant nature of work combined with the
highly stressful conditions, also lures the workers into other
addictions like gambling. In the quarry sites surveyed in
Cuddapah, the most serious problem stated at every place,
was the addiction to ‘mutka’-gambling, which is a highly
organised racket with several political power structures
reported to be illegally involved in promoting this. Therefore,
because of mutka and alcohol, domestic violence and abuse
on women is very high among the quarry workers, also
because the men do not have the social checks and balances
as in a village community. Children are continuously
exposed to these social abuses and live in an environment
that is insecure, both socially and physically.
TB and/or silicosis are the main health problems that were
expressed by most of the mine workers. They complained
that they become incapable of performing any tasks after
10–12 years of working in the mines and most of their
life is spent in ill-health and medical expenses. In the area
surveyed, 6–8 cases of HIV positive cases were reported
among the mine workers in Vaddepalli and Elagallu quarries
and three cases were identified in Devipatla quarry.
(Acknowledgements: The study in Cuddapah district
was carried out by Mr. Vijaykumar of Vennella Rural
Development Society (VRDS) as a part of the current study
and his contribution to the same is acknowledged.)
Case Study: Visakhapatnam
District
The quarries studied here are small-scale and between 6
and 20 years old. Anakapalli Mandal in Visakhapatnam
district is a rich agricultural and industrial belt, close to the
national highway. The quarries operated here are by local
contractors and politicians who take hills on lease all around
the agricultural lands and supply the stone to local stone
crushers. The work in the quarries is mostly dependent
on migrant labour who come from the surrounding north
coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh, either seasonally or for
a few years at a time. However, some families have settled
down here for the last 10–20 years and continue to work in
the quarries or maintain lorries and trucks. There are many