Children - Terre des Hommes

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Basic housing and sanitation are absent in stone quarry workers’ colonies–
children consuming polluted water (Photo September 2009)
most of the sites the women complained that they often fell
sick on consuming the water.
Children of the mine workers were found to be scattered
all over the mine sites around the shacks, looking dirty and
dusty. The mine site is their home, playground, sleeping
area and is where the Pashan Shalas’ (schools for children of
quarry workers run by the organisation Santulan) are also
located. In all the nine sites visited, we saw children looking
unhealthy, suffering from cough, cold, runny noses, fevers,
and skin infections. The women said that diarrhoea, jaundice
and malaria are the most common health problems of the
children, as the water is contaminated and the cesspools in
the mine pits are breeding grounds for mosquitoes. There
is no sanitation facility, so most of the infants and younger
children were seen defecating around the living quarters. For
the women, sanitation is a huge problem as there are no toilets
and no areas for bathing.
Child labour In the Quarries:
It Exists
In the nine sites visited, children are attending school only
where Santulan, the NGO, runs the Pashan Shalas. The
Pashan Shalas were created to rescue the children from
working in the mines and currently there are 2001 children
enrolled in these schools, scattered across five districts
in Maharashtra. But for this intervention, all these 2001
children would have been working in the quarries or helping
their parents in petty chores at the mine sites. At Gore Wasti
Pashan Shala, the children shared information about their
teenage brothers and sisters working in the mines and how
most of them had joined work as children. For Santulan, it is
difficult to motivate children and adolescents who are already
Mother awaits child returning home after a hard day’s labour in the mines–
each hammer weighs more than 10 kgs (Photo September 2009)
working for some period to join the Pashan Shalas, as the lure
of instant money, especially for boys, is too difficult to give up.
As some of the boys, forced by circumstances, are addicted to
gutka, gambling, mobile phones, movies and theft/crime, they
find school a very boring place. They reported that they work
in the tractors, garages, crushing units and in loading. Many
of them said they started work as children due to ill-health
and indebtedness of parents.
In Sai Stone Quarry (Magoan, Nasik), 60–70 girls out of the
150, are working in the stone crushers, breaking stones and
loading. At Mahalaxmi Stone Quarry five children, around
13 years of age, were found to be working and in a nearby
quarry, eight children, aged about 10 years, were working
at the mine site. The children, who said they were migrants
from Bihar, reported that they work in two shifts where four
children work in the morning and four in the evening shift. In
Matere Stone Quarry, seven children between the ages of 14
and 16 were found working. The women regretted not being
able to send their children to the Santulan Pashan Shalas as
their economic situation was really desperate. Moshi Stone
But for these Pashan Shala run by Santulan, children would end up in the
mine sites breaking stones (Photo September 2009)