Children - Terre des Hommes

26
Migrants live in the worst housing conditions, often without
electricity, water or even basic sanitation. The most shocking
living conditions seen in mining areas in the course of this
study were of migrant communities, who almost always live
in makeshift accommodation close to the mining sites, or
even at the sites. Houses are temporary dwellings made of
plastic sheets and quarry stones packed as walls. Up to 10
family members may share a house of 8x10 feet space, or
They also face the additional problems of resentment
and hostility from local communities, who see them as
outsiders and often refuse to allow them to integrate.
They may live for years around the mines, but not be
accepted or recognised as part of the local community. In
Jodhpur district, Rajasthan, we met with a Scheduled Tribe
community who had been forced to relocate to the area in
order to be close to the mining work. Despite living on this
land for almost 20 years now, they were still engaged in a
battle with two local villages that wanted them to be moved
off this land and had not been given pattas (title deeds) for
their properties.
Across the country, children of the migrant mineworkers
were found scattered all over the mine sites around the
shacks looking dirty and dusty. The mine site is their home,
playground and sleeping area. In all the nine sites visited in
Maharashtra, we saw children looking unhealthy, suffering
from coughs, colds, leaking noses, fevers and skin infections.
The women said that diarrhea, jaundice and malaria are
the most common child health problems as the water is
contaminated and the cess–pools in the mine pits are a
breeding ground for mosquitoes. There is no sanitation
facility, so most of the infants and younger children are
seen defecating around the living quarters. For the women,
sanitation is a huge problem as there are no toilets and no
area for bathing.
Education for children of seasonal migrants has not been
on the radar screen of the government or development
agencies, despite the fact that it is a growing phenomenon
in almost all arid parts of India. Children accompany their
parents when they migrate, and as a result dropout rates
increase. The seasonal migration cycle — based around the
monsoon period — overlaps with six to seven months of
the school calendar. This means that children who do enroll
can only attend school from June until October, after which
they usually drop out. These drop out rates are often
not captured by official education data, as the children get
enrolled in schools for the first few months of the school
session, but then drop out for the remaining months of the
academic year to accompany their parents to migration sites.
Over time, the learning deficit gradually causes them to drop
out of school completely and work full-time.
In Panna district, Madhya Pradesh, residents explained
that school dropout rates are high because of migration.
Large numbers of the community are engaged in diamond
mining work. However, this diamond work is seasonal and
only available six to eight months of the year, so during the
other months they migrate elsewhere in the country for
work. Locals complained that government schemes aimed at
enabling them to remain in the district all through the year,
such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme
(NREGA), were not being implemented effectively and thus
lack of available work was driving them to migrate. Instead,
under the NREGA scheme people were only getting maybe
10 or 20 days work in a year, and there was a lot of corruption
involved in determining who managed to get job cards.
Similar problems were reported in the stone quarrying
13 year old Santosh (name changed) works in a stone
quarry in Moshi village of Pune district. He had to migrate
with his family from Nashik and has been working in the
quarry for more than a year now. He works from early
morning till late in the evening breaking stones and loading
them onto trucks. He has four siblings, one of whom is
physically handicapped. He earns Rs. 70-90 per day, which
is desperately needed to keep the family from starvation.
When interviewed he said, “I always wanted to study but
our family is not in a position to send us to school and now
it is too late for me to dream about it. I want to work hard
so that I can use my wages to send my younger brothers to
school.”
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
Interviews with mineworkers, Bhat Basti, Jodhpur district, Rajasthan, July 2009.
Visits to mine sites, Maharashtra, September 2009.
Ibid, p. 2.
Ibid, p. 34.
Interviews with mining-affected communities, Panna, Madhya Pradesh, August 2009.
Ibid.