Lock industry

The lock industry is mostly concentrated in the Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh. Studies reveal that more than 60 percent of the workers in this sector are children under 14 years of age. Children do polishing, electroplating, spray painting and working on hand presses. They cut different components of locks for nearly 12-14 hours a day with hand presses. Exhaustion causes accidents; many lose the tips of their fingers, which get caught in the machines.

The most hazardous job for children in the lock industry is polishing. The boys who do polishing stand close to the buffing machines. The buffing machines that run on electric power have emery powder coated on bobs. While polishing the locks, they inhale emery powder with metal dust and almost all polishers suffer from respiratory disorders and tuberculosis. In the small units, about 70 percent of the polishers are children.

Similarly, electroplating is another extremely hazardous process in which more than 70 percent of workers are children below the age of 14 years. Children work with naked hands in dangerous chemicals such as potassium cyanide, sodium phosphate, sodium silicate, hydroelectric acid, sulphuric acid, sodium hydroxide, chromic acid, barium hydroxide, etc. Children, besides being affected by the usual consequences of chemical substances, are also at risk of shocks as these substances also produce electricity and the floors are usually wet. The children have their hands in these solutions for the better part of the twelve-hour-day. Some cases of electrocution have been due to illegal electric connections obtained by some of these units from streetlights²⁷.

About 50 per cent of the workforce in the spray-painting sector of the lock industry is comprised of children. While at work, these children inhale large quantities of paint and paint thinners, leading to severe chest disorders. They suffer from breathlessness, fever, tuberculosis, bronchitis, asthma, and pneumoconiosis and from such symptoms and diseases. Work in the lock industry is dangerous and very hazardous for all employees, but is especially so for children.

Thus, in India children do all kinds activities, from household work to brick making, from stone breaking to selling in shops and on streets, from bike repairing to garbage collecting and rag-picking. Most children work on farms and plantations or houses, far from the media scrutiny and the reach of a labour inspector.

There is no product that has not been scented by the sweat of a child labourer. India today has earned the dubious distinction of having the highest child labour force in the world.