No crackers at IIT to protest child labour

EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

October 11: A section of the Indian Institute of Technology (Powai) students has decided to boycott firecrackers this Diwali to express solidarity with Child Relief and You's (CRY) anti-child labour campaign.Rishi Mohan Sanwal, a fourth-year student of mechanical engineering and member of the students' group WeCare, which has taken a stand against crackers, said: ``We are concerned about the menace of child labour, amply evident in industries like the cracker company Sivakasi. Going by the data available with CRY, a child as young as four years old is forced to make crackers, and by the time the child is thirty, he/she becomes unfit for work, due to the abominable working conditions.''

The WeCare group, Sanwal pointed out, is also making efforts to persuade other IIT students to join its campaign. WeCare has also issued an appeal to all the citizens of the metropolis to undertake a fight against the menace of child labour.

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