Mumbai: Reliance General Insurance (RGI) has partnered with Child Rights and You (CRY) to raise public awareness in the fight against child labour.
According to estimates, a staggering 5.8 million children, in the age group of 5-17 years, are currently employed as child labours and used for physical labour in India, the highest incidence of child labour amongst all the South Asian countries.
RGI, in a bid to create widespread awareness against this issue of Child labour, has launched a twitter campaign #DONT_EMPLOY_LITTLE_ONES. The campaign aims at inviting people to take a pledge and lend their voices to fight against child labour by tweeting with hashtag #DONT_EMPLOY_LITTLE_ONES.
Each tweet, with this hashtag, will be counted as a pledge against child labour and act as a first step towards achieving freedom from this practice.
Each participant will then be invited to the campaign page to make a contribution to CRY towards this cause. The campaign page will also contain vital information about the role each individual can play in their own personal spaces to fight against child labour.
Reliance General Insurance CEO, Rakesh Jain, said that the company is committed to promoting child safety, adding that every single citizen has a moral obligation to ensure that child safety.
“We firmly believe that every single citizen has a moral obligation to ensure that Child Safety -child’s right to safety and safe environment – is not taken away from children against their wishes and they get equal opportunity to grow and live their dreams. This Twitter campaign is our small contribution to create this awareness and one of the many initiatives we do as a corporate towards child safety,” he said.
CRY Director Anita Bala Sharad, said millions of children in India are engaged in labour, are battling minimum wages, facing long working hours, suffering abuse and exploitation and being brutally deprived of their basic rights.
She also expressed concern over the increase in child lab in the urban set up.
“In urban setup, child labour has drastically increased by 53% in the last decade,” she said.
“Through this joint initiative with Reliance General Insurance we hope to highlight this issue and shake people out of their indifference. Reaching out to the masses, we are hoping that they will pledge their support and take up responsibility at an individual level to ensure children receive education in schools and are not engaged in labour,” she added.
Reliance General Insurance has a sustained strategy to work towards Child Safety. The company has, till date, reached out to over 5000 children across various schools and facilities through its programs on Child Safety. (ANI-Newsvoir)