Work or school? Pandemic question haunts kids

CHENNAI: Mahendran* was determined to pay off the loan his mother had obtained for his sister’s wedding the previous year. He took up a job that would pay him Rs 6,000 a month for a 12- hour work day. He was only one among a dozen children working at a saree store in Chengalpattu during the lockdown; and among thousands from Tamil Nadu and across the country, who became a victim of child labour during the period.

Loss of jobs and no mid-day meals meant increased expenditure and new debts to pay. With schools shut, children, whose families are financially vulnerable, have become easy targets to be lured into cheap labour and odd jobs. Stakeholders urge that there is an urgent need for the government to collate data on out-of-school children, and ensure that they are pulled out of exploitative working conditions.

Mahendran said that he was scared when the Tamil Nadu government announced that schools would be reopened for class 10 and 12 students from January 19. He returned home from work that day and broke the news to his family at the dinner table. “I had received an advance from my boss for Pongal. I could not return without working for that,” he said. He returned to school a full week after reopening.

Similarly Kayal* and Nandhini*, too, were working in the toys section of a retail chain in T Nagar in Chennai. They are enrolled in class 12 in a school in Kancheepuram. The girls giggled when asked why they had not returned to school.

“We forgot everything we studied. My parents spent the money they had saved for my dowry during the lockdown. They said it’s better that I work for a while,” said Kayal. The principal of a government- aided school, on condition of anonymity, said that about 20 per cent of students had not returned to the school after the reopening.

“We have not been able to reach out to some of them. But other students said that they cannot leave their jobs,” the principal said, adding that a few students had said that they will come to school in February as they already got their salary for January. One of the students from that school had started going with her mother as a domestic help during the lockdown.

“She does not want to come back to school because she is confident that she won’t perform well. She says why lose her job if she’s going to fail anyway,” the principal elaborated. “The government conducted a survey on out-of school children in December. However, we will know the full picture only after schools reopen in a full-fledged manner,” said an official from the school educat i o n department. (*Names changed)