Ahmedabad police have been asked to appoint nodal officers to liaison with the labour department and NGOs working to eliminate child labour, and to ensure that owners of such establishments are booked under the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act and the Juvenile Justice Act.
The move comes at the request of Ahmedabad collector Sandip Sagale, who, after receiving numerous complaints from NGOs working for children and Labour Department officers about difficulties in lodging FIRs against those employing child labour, asked the Ahmedabad police commissioner and Ahmedabad Rural SP to appoint nodal officers who can ensure that such employers are promptly booked.
The issues were raised and discussed at an Ahmedabad District Task Force on Child Labour meeting.
Ahmedabad CP Shrivastava, in a letter dated September 18, appointed the ACP of Mahila Cell, currently Mini Joseph, as the nodal officer. He further appointed the DCP Crime Branch, currently Chaitanya Mandlik, as supervisor in such cases.
SP Vasava in rural Ahmedabad confirmed that DySP Headquarters, ND Chauhan, had been appointed as nodal officer in June.
Stakeholders had raised concerns in the meeting about non-cooperation and lack of communication between officials in the filing of FIRs related to child labour and emphasised the need to appoint liaison police officers to get full cooperation from police.
Sources said labour department officials and volunteers of various NGOs face a lot of problems due to non-cooperation of local police, leading to those involved in the rescue of children, having to spend hours in police stations or juggling between police stations to file FIRs in such cases.
“There have been cases where filing of a case has been delayed several days,”officially said in April how it took 7 days for police officials to book a child labour FIR in Bhavnagar after 7 children were rescued from Ahmedabad railway station.
Ahmedabad Collector Sagale, chairperson of the Task Force Said , “Task Force members raised serious issues regarding the delay in filing of FIRs and lack of coordination between different government authorities. So we requested the CP to appoint nodal officers to streamline the process.”