Child Labor and Nepal
Nepalese law says: A child is a person who has not completed 16 years of age. Law says, to work in Nepal as a child, you must be at least 14 years old, and that child can work for no more than six hours, and children must not work during 6 P.M. to 6 A.M hours, you must get a break of 30 minutes after 3 hours of work and nobody should pressure child to work.
The above law is only written in pages but never enforced. Millions of Nepali kids are employed by their moms and dads for household works to help them all day long instead of attending a school and getting education. Nepal does not punish parents if they fail to send their kids to school starting from a certain age. For example, in US parents can go to jail if they don’t send their kids to school from as early as five years of age. Many kids work in factories such as carpet factories, coal mines, in stone quarries, in house and road constructions, as an assistant to bus driver and bus conductor, as a dishwasher in restaurants, and also as a servant in thousands of mid class to rich class Nepalese homes. Of all the kids working in Nepal most of them are as young as 11 years old, by the law it means they shouldn’t be working at all.
First of all, Nepali Kids don’t have the rights to live and grow in a peaceful environment as country’s decade old war continues. Official records indicate that about 500 innocent kids have died in the war conflict and millions are affected by the war. Many have lost their parents or someone in the family, or have parents unable to make ends meet. Extreme hardship life pushes the Nepali Kids into labor.
National Legislation and Policies Against Child Labour in Nepal
Legislation
The interim Constitution of Nepal, 1990, seeks to protect the interests of children by conferring on them certain fundamental rights and imposing for their benefit certain 'directive principles and policies of the State'. The State shall make necessary arrangements to safeguard the rights and interests of children, ensure that they are not exploited, and make gradual arrangements for free education.
Apart from the Constitution, the following four laws contain important provisions for the protection and advancement of the interests of children and child labourers:
• The Children's Act, 1992: This Act was enacted to protect the rights and interests of Nepalese children and to ensure their physical, mental, and intellectual development. It also contains a number of provisions on child labour, and it has recently been amended to make the Act more abuse-specific, especially in relation to sexual abuse. The Act defines a child as a person below the age of 16 years and states that a child who has not attained the age of 14 shall not be employed in any work as a labourer;
• Labour Rules, 1993, contain specific provisions for the prohibition of employment of children below the age of 14 years and prohibits admission to hazardous work for minors (aged between 14 and 18 years);
• The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1999, followed Nepal's ratification of the ILO Minimum Age Convention (No. 138), and has made important amendments in the Labour Act, 1992. The Child Labour Act enlists specific occupations as hazardous work and prohibits the use of children below 16 years of age in such activities. The Act regulates hours of work for children aged 14 - 16 and provides that no child shall be engaged to work during a period from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Further, it prohibits the engagement of children below 14 in any kind of employment.
• Kamaiya Labour Probihition Act, 2001, Prohibits bonded labour; frees bonded labourers and extinguishes debt flowing from such arrangements. As a result of the Kamaiya Act, many bonded girls in domestic servitude have been withdrawn and reintegrated with their families.
