The National Human Rights Commission will hold a one-day workshop in Pune tomorrow on elimination of bonded labour where it will also take up five long-pending cases related to the exploitative system.
The event will be held at the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration, Raj Bhawan Complex, in collaboration with the Maharashtra government, the NHRC said.
To be chaired by NHRC member justice D Murugesan, the workshop will start at 09:30 am and conclude by 04:00 pm, it said.
“After the interactive sessions, the commission will also take up the five long-pending cases of bonded labour, including three from Pune, and one each from Nagpur and Jalgaon, which have been awaiting compliance from the state authorities concerned,” the NHRC said in a statement.
Senior officers of the state government, Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission, NGOs and representatives of brick kilns, stone crushing and other related industries, academicians and final year law students and research scholars from various universities in Pune are slated to attend it.
It aims to familiarise district magistrates, state labour officers, members of vigilance committees and other stakeholders with the process of identification, release and rehabilitation of bonded labourers under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, and other related laws.
The NHRC was asked by the Supreme Court in 1997 to get involved in the monitoring of the implementation of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976.
“The court’s directions came while hearing a writ petition — People’s Union for Civil Liberties vs State of Tamil Nadu & others. Since then, the NHRC has been overseeing the implementation of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976 in different parts of the country,” it said.
Therefore, the commission, in its endeavour to raise concern on the continuance of bonded labour has been organising workshops to sensitise official machinery to work for its abolition in different parts of the country.
The NHRC has organised 41 workshops on elimination of bonded labour so far, it said.
The act of extraction of bonded labour is a criminal offence.