Sandeep Pandey bats for poor kids

THOUSANDS OF children, working in brick kilns, heaved a sigh of relief when a noted social worker Sandeep Pandey took up their cause: Education, housing and health facilities.

THOUSANDS OF children, working in brick kilns, heaved a sigh of relief when a noted social worker Sandeep Pandey took up their cause: Education, housing and health facilities.

HT Image

Pandey presented a memorandum to the district magistrate demanding proper housing facilities for children who are working in the brick kilns so that they could avail proper education.

Later, talking to newsmen, Pandey said that children working in the brick kilns were denied admission in the government schools.

Pandey further stated, “Explanation given by the government schools for refusing admission to these children working in brick kilns is their nomadic nature.”

He said majority of labourers working in brick kilns were from Bihar and Chattisgarh and therefore they could not stay at one place for the long period.

This drawback was often an alibi for the government schools for denying admission to children of labourers working in brick kilns, Pandey added.

He said that if such labourers were provided residential facilities near the brick kilns then their children could get admission in the government schools.

He also demanded that brick kiln owners must also make proper arrangements for imparting education to children of labourers working for them.

Highlighting the plight of child labourers, Pandey stated that in Kanpur district and Dehat there were 400 brick kilns and about 50000 labourers work in these brick kilns.

Commenting on the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Pandey said that benefits of the programme schemes were not reaching up to the poor section of the society.