Impact of Labour Laws on Child Labour: A case of Tourism Industry

Abstract

Tourism industry is one of the world’s fastest growing economic sector and largest employer of manpower helps in earning multi-billion dollar annually by attracting a billion of people from one destination to another. But it has a story too. Recent researches reveal that it has various social, economical, cultural, and environmental impacts on society. According to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Global Report 2006, Tourism affects the lives of 218 million children. India has the distinction of the largest number of working children in the world today. According to Indian official statistics about 13 million children are engaged in tourism industry but unofficial estimates vary between 60-100 million. Throughout India there have been numerous studies which have shown the existence of child exploitation due to tourism. In the year 2006 the tourism and hospitality sector was added to the list of hazardous occupation under the Child Labour Act 1986. As the benefits from tourism industry is increasing day by day and attracting millions of foreign investment, the risk of child labour is increasing exponentially and along with greater demand for human trafficking. Various child labour laws have been enacted to protect the most vulnerable workers from unsafe and unhealthy work environment and to prevent minor children from being forced to work in ways that are considered detrimental to them. The main objective of this paper is to find out the reason why children work in tourism industry, to know the risk involved if they work with tourism sector, and to know the role of government and tourism industry in eradication of this serious problem. This paper also helps in measuring the effectiveness of labour laws and actions taken by the International Labour Organization, World Tourism Organization to mitigate this problem..To evaluate the actual situation of child labour in tourism industry ,in this paper information has been gathered through secondary sources like books, magazines (yojna) ,WTO report, report of Tourism Ministry, News paper etc. For this purpose two research questions were prepared (a) increasing economic benefit of tourism industry is attracting as well as exploiting the future of India. (b) Child Labour laws made to eradicate the problem of child labour has reduced the number of child labourers in papers only not in actual. After analyzing the facts and figures it can be conclude that the problem of child labour and commercial sexual exploitation of children can’t be solved easily unless collective efforts have been made by Government officials, NGO’s, Civil Society workers and Tourism Industry employers to eradicate it. Policies and legislations should not only formulate but implemented in right spirit. Government and all other institutions must join their hands together to stop all forms of exploitation of children otherwise we will fail to secure the rights of our children who are the future of our India.
Keywords: Child-labour, Hospitality, Human trafficking, Exploitation, Labour law, Tourism, Sexual-abuse.