MUMBAI, January 22: Hundreds of tribal children working in the brick kilns of Thane district took out a morcha on Wednesday to the office of the Additional Commissioner, Tribal Development, demanding educational facilities.Carrying ten bricks each on their heads, the children aged between five and ten gate-crashed into Addl Commissioner S D Kulkarni's office and gifted him the bricks. The children belonged to the Bhonga Shalas run by the Vidhayak Sansad and Shramajivi Sanghatana working towards the upliftment of the tribals. The organisations run mobile schools for the child labourers at the kiln sites.
Instead of extending their support to the organisations, Additional Collector Surendra Bagde and the tribal development project officer, Jawahar, had made statements to the effect that the children were not labourers at the kilns and, hence, the Bhonga Shalas started for them should be closed down.
Protesting against this, the children gave Kulkarni a detailed account of their work on the brick kilns
and demanded that they continue to receive education.
Talking to this correspondent after the morcha, Sanghatana activist Paromita Goswami said that Bagde had demanded proof that the children were working on the kilns though he had already visited the sites and personally met them. Leave aside provision of funds, the officer has yet to acknowledge a proposal for the schools that was sent to him way back in June 1997, she added. , Parotima said.
After a dialogue with the children and teachers of the schools, Kulkarni ordered Bagde to submit a report on the issue. It is learnt that Kulkarni has agreed to release funds for 11 out of 40 Bhonga Shalas in the district.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
