Acting on a tip-off, a special team raided 40 places in Dharavi including zari units, hotels, bakeries and leather industries and rescued the children.
The team comprised 20 policemen, around 30 officials from labour department and BMC and 52 volunteers from NGO Pratham.
“Employers have been arrested under the Child Prevention of Labour Act and will be produced in court tomorrow,” said Police Sub-Inspector S Ranavare. “All the 36 owners are put behind bars and the children will be taken to Dongri remand home,” added Navnath Kamble, volunteer with Pratham.
“Most of the rescued children hail from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and were confined to their units. They were made to work for 15 hours for a paltry sum of Rs 100 a week and the older and skilled children were paid Rs 50 to 100 per day,” he added.
In spite of raids, child labour still continues to be a problem in the city with children migrating from other states are either runaways or sent by their parents to source livelihood.
However, Farida Lamba, trustee of Pratham, denies that the numbers are increasing,
“In the past one-and-a half years, out of the 30,000 child labourers we worked with, in terms of educating them, only 9,000 are left in the city. The government is trying to bring down the numbers. And as far as migrant child labourers are concerned, the government is sourcing their families and educating them,” she said.