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SPORTS: FOOTBALL CONTROVERSY
Old Enmity
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"Where
did they get the ridiculous figure of 10,000 child labourers?"
P.C. SONDHI, member, Sports Goods
Foundation of India
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The hostility between
the two parties dates back to 1997 when Christian Aid, working with Satyarthi's
group South Asian Coalition for Child Servitude (SACCS), released a report
titled "A Sporting Chance: Tackling Child Labour in India's Sports
Goods Industry" on the eve of the 1998 football World Cup. It had
devastating consequences. Major overseas buyers like Adidas, Mitre and
Umbro began to question Indian football manufacturers about working conditions
and some like Puma took their business out of India.
The SGFI itself was formed as a response to
the furore created by the Christian Aid report. After the report was made
public, FICCI commissioned the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute to
investigate the prevalence of child labour in the sports goods industry.
It concluded that 10,000 children below 14 were stitching footballs in
the district of Jalandhar and 1,350 of them were full-time labourers.
Before 1997, manufacturers would hand out football kits to contractors
who would take them to stitchers' homes where the pieces were sewed by
hand. The question of how old the stitchers were and in what conditions
they worked remained outside the exporters' concern.
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LEARN TO EARN: A class in progress at one of the four schools adopted
by the SGFI
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In 1998, 25 sports goods exporters came together
to form the SGFI (the group now has 32 members), each of whom contributes
0.25 per cent of their earnings from football exports every month to support
a social protection and monitoring programme. The programme was drawn
up in consultation with the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial
Development (CRRID), Chandigarh, WFSGI, Save the Children and UNICEF,
and it involves regular monitoring by a Swiss firm called Société
Générale de Surveillance (SGS). Contractors now have to
list details-name, age, location-of the home-based stitchers hired by
them. SGS then cross-checks the locations and details of stitchers made
available by the manufacturers by making home visits.
The SGS says it covered close to 75 per cent
of the locations between January 2000 and June 2001 and should visit all
registered locations by the end of the year. After visiting 1,002 locations
until December 2000, they found 70 children stitching footballs, of which
65 were school-going and five were not. "That is still 70 children
too many," says Georgemans, "but 70 is a long way from 10,000."
Satyarthi questions the objectivity of monitoring carried out by a body
hired by the industry itself. SGS divisional manager in Delhi, Sudarshan
Sharma, counters, "It is the buying community which should feel comfortable
with our reports. Otherwise they would not trust us."
The SGFI has also adopted four "transitional"
schools set up under the National Child Labour Project to help working
children enter the school system. According to Shikha Ghildyal of Save
the Children, "The question of child labour has to be put in context.
If a child is not involved in a hazardous industry, goes to school, gets
enough rest and recreation, and can learn a skill which will help in the
future, then it is acceptable... the SGFI programme is a good effort and
a way of showing corporate social responsibility." This controversy
has once again raised the critical issue of the need to bridge the gap
between advocacy and an objective assessment of ground realities.
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