Bengal has 363 schools under 'Nat'l Child Labour Project'

KOLKATA: State Labour minister Becharam Manna said at the state Assembly on Wednesday that the number of schools under National Child Labour Project (NCLP) are 363 in the state. The total number of students, teachers (instructors) and other employees in these schools are 16562, 726 and 869 respectively.

The NCLP schools are responsible for schooling those children who are rescued by the state government from being compelled to work as child labourers and equipping them to return to the mainstream.

Most of the districts in the state already have NCLP schools. Birbhum, North Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri, East Burdwan, West Burdwan and Hooghly are the districts where survey is going on for setting up such schools. "Nadia has received the nod for setting up 75 such schools while South 24-Parganas has received permission for 22 such schools," the minister said while presenting the statistics of the existing schools in the districts and the number of students studying there. The minister said that in the 2020-21 fiscal, the Labour department has handed over 9.38 lakh labour cards."We are trying to develop facilities so that labour cards are made available to the beneficiaries in close proximity to their homes," the

minister said.