In a country where its constitution prohibits child labour, India's textile factories still teem with a workforce made-up of children between the age of 5 and 14 years of age. In the past week we have seen Amber alerts in the USA and the equivalent in the UK alerting the public to be on the lookout for missing children because we believe that our children should be protected from harms way.
But thousands of children in India are being sold to contractors by their own parents, to work in sweat shops, making clothes for us in the Western World. A fact I find very difficult to comprehend and fills me with great sadness.
I live in an area of Scotland where children worked down coal and shale mines, this practise finally ceased 75 years ago. Although I'm sure it was of little solace, in most instances their whole family worked in the same mine and they could return to their family home at the end of their long and arduous shift.
Whereas the child work-force in India eat, sleep and work in the same squalid room, sometimes never ever seeing their families again. I can only imagine it is a miserable existence for these children. Their childhood has been stolen from them, with a life of all work and no play. If you would like to help, or find out more, www.unicef.org
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