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• Kids play with fire, make crackers
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Keywords: Hotels, Eateries

Mumbai: The long hours Sonu works at a mechanic shop show on his face. He is a sweeper and is constantly kept busy. He has no free time for himself and home is now a distant dream. Sonu spent Diwali this year wishing he was back in his village in Uttar Pradesh.

"I don't like it here. This Diwali, I thought of going back home, but I didn't have enough money," says he.

Sonu is paid Rs 30 per day. Boys like him flood Mumbai everyday and if you stop for a cup of cutting chai, you may still be served by one of them.

It's been a month on Friday since the Government banned child labour in homes, hotels and eateries, but has the law really been enforced? Have children actually stopped working at restaurants and shops and homes?

A reality check shows that at most eateries or tea stalls in the city, the new law is still stuck in print. Boys - all clearly under 14 - are still seen at working.

Restaurant managers insist the boys are older, or just lending a hand in their free time.

Says a waiter at one such eatery of one of the boys working with him, "He just comes here after school instead of sitting at home and getting bored. We don't pay him, just give him something to eat."

In the last year, the state Labour Department conducted 46 child-labour-related raids. Ever since the amendment, they are yet to target the restaurant business.

"We did not conduct raids earlier because of Ramazan and Diwali, but now we are going to get cracking on raids in homes and hotel industries," says Maharashtra Labour Commissioner, B D Sanap.

The Government's own estimates say that 2.5 lakh children work in homes and hotels in India. In Mumbai alone one in seven restaurants employs a child under 14.

"We are concerned that when the raids happen, these children might become invisible. We are talking to the Government and trying to explain that this cannot be done suddenly. We have to instill faith in them that we will be able to provide a better tomorrow to them," says Farida Lambay, who works with an NGO called Pratham.

However, employers say that the law cannot alter ground realities.

Says a tea stall owner, "Fourteen-year-old boys are fit for school, not work, we agree. But what options do parents have if they don't have money for education?"

Talk to any Udupi restaurant owner, and you'll find the hospitality sector often does not regard child labour as a crime, but as social service. It is a perception that might be resistant to change even as the law is enforced.