Avoid Child Labour In Restaurants

Lobby View

P S Sundar

Since my Dutch guest desired an ethnic vegetarian meal, I took her to a good restaurant in the heart of Karur, a textile centre of Tamil Nadu. After my lecture in the town on marketing this week, when, appreciatively, she heard me professing the plus points of the globalised approach to business developed in India. One point I had stressed on was that the labour laws in India are strong and hence, it is wrong to contend that there is exploitation of the workforce.

This always gains weight in globalised lectures because, world-over, there is criticism that there is labour exploitation in China. So, after we settled at a table for dinner, she threw a couple of appreciative notes about the ambience of the restaurant, the budgetary nature of the accommodation there etc. She agreed with my course of lecture, but, soon came the bomb. She spotted a young boy carrying a water jug in one hand and a tower of silver tumblers in the other to serve water to the guests.

Then, she saw another boy younger than him wearing dirty clothes who was engaged in cleaning tables. Both the boys should have been in school. It was a definite case of child labour. I have come across textile units displaying boards which say that no child is employed in the establishment and I had quoted this in some of my lectures in India and abroad. But, this is a case of child employment in a hotel in a textile town. I just swept over the issue saying that this was a sporadic case and focused on discussions relating to other topics, but I was disturbed.

Ethnic hotels all over the country have become the abode for poor children who drop out of schools for various reasons. Some times, the parents withdraw their children forcefully from schools and send them to the restaurants and tea shops to earn a livelihood. In some cases, the children who fear their schools and parents run away and get jobs elsewhere. The work they are required to do is menial, the working hours are long, the payment is low, the clothes they wear are dirty, they are forced to sleep in the kitchen or the store room of the restaurant and the facilities for bathing are limited. There are also instances of their superiors and the owners beating them.

Progressive-minded restaurants do not employ children. Given the prohibition of child labour, there is no such thing like fair employment, giving better salaries and facilities to the children. It is also a different matter to contend that the hotels are giving an opportunity for poor homes to earn their livelihood - more so, when education becomes tough, employment brings in the much-needed improvement at home.

Taking care of children is a different aspect, but employing them in hotels under whichever guise is simply not correct. To that extent, the restaurant owners bodies in different towns should introduce self-discipline for their members and ensure that child labour is banned totally. It is a moral sin for a guest to eat in a place which profits from the sweat of a child. Guests should refrain from eating in those restaurants. These are voluntary steps taken by the offerers of service and the users, irrespective of the laws in implementation. Hotels claiming to employ children to help them will do a greater service by helping with their education.