Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XXI. - Wages on planatations

Collection:: Economics Books

HEALTH AND WELFARE IN PLANTATIONS, 415 that, on the plantations of its members, * children aged 4 or 5 were all working children ”. Another association declared that it had no policy in the matter, and that individual members exercised their own discre- tion. As a result, where one manager admitted that children generally started work at 4,5 or 6 years of age, and another that they started on light tasks “as soon as they could walk ”, yet others stated that their children did not become workers before 9, 10 or even 11 years of age. The normal practice seems to be to allow children to accompany their parents at any age, their earnings being added to those of their parents, although in some gardens the managers are accustomed to send home young children found at work with their parents. In many areas children are not normally entered separately in the wage hooks as employed persons until about 10 years of age. It was explain- ed to us more than once that managers desired to keep their labour con- tented by interfering as little as possible with its customs, and that plan- tation workers, being agriculturalists, were accustomed to allow their children to start work at a very early age. Nevertheless progress has frequently to be made by gradual and tactful interference with customs which, under altered conditions of life and labour, no longer apply with the old force. Exclusion of Young Children. We believe that the unrestricted age limit for the employment of children on the plantations of India is a case in point. We consider it undesirable that children below the age of 10 years should be employed, nor do we believe that the work of such children is of material benefit to the gardens, Moreover this is the statutory age limit for Indian children employed on plantations in Ceylon and Malaya. We accordingly recom- mend the legal prohibition of the employment, either directly or with their parents, of children on plantations before the age of 10 years. We do not suggest any restriction of the hours of work of persons above that age, as we believe that common sense and individual physical rapacity already apply the necessary brake in the vast majority of cases. Nor do we advocate any elaborate machinery, such as the certifi- cation by an independent authority of children of employable age. We recommend that, in the case of children not born on a plantation and therefore without registered birth certificates, the garden doctor should be required to determine the age before the child is allowed to start work, and that the names of all employed children should be entered in the wage book. The district health officer, when visiting the garden, should be required to satisfy himself that no working child is below the legal age. Claims of Education. The regulation of the labour of children has always been bound ap with the question of their education. ‘We feel that the case of the plantations presents certain characteristics which make it not unreason- able to look to the employer for a bigger contribution towards the educa- tion of the actual and potential child worker. Their labour has been recruited from a far field and frequently brought into an area populated by

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