Full Coverage: Labour

31.10.2007 NEW YORK, Oct 31 (OneWorld) - Traditionally, it's the kids who receive sweets from the elders on Halloween, but that years-old ritual is getting a makeover this year in hundreds of communities across North America.

31.10.2007 Employers are practicing social favouritism by shunning dalits and Muslims with matching qualifications in favour of those with upper-caste Hindu names. A recent study provides sufficient evidence on the discriminatory character of the Indian job market.

31.10.2007 Fourteen minors were recently rescued from the clutches of a sub-contractor, working for clothing giant GAP, by a local NGO in Shahpur Jaat area in the Indian capital. But what about the 100,000 child labourers still engaged in embroidery and zari sweatshops in Delhi?

30.10.2007 The Jatropha scrub weed can weather droughts, stop soil erosion, transform barren lands into lush greenery, while providing self-sufficient energy for rural communities – all at the same time. While India has plans to make the plant its chief biofuel source, there is little knowledge on the environmental impact of its cultivation.

26.10.2007 The Indian cottonseed industry is marked by the highest proportion of child labour in its workforce, primarily girls. This blatant modern form of child exploitation is linked to the larger operating market forces and masks the social and legal responsibilities of the state, says a recent report.

25.10.2007 A Food for Work initiative by the World Food Programme (WFP) has helped rebuild more than 1,300 kms of rural roads and almost 9,000 kms of bridle paths in quake-affected North Pakistan. Rural roads and pathways connecting the mountainous terrain were destroyed by the 2005 earthquake, cutting people off from relief supplies and medical aid.

23.10.2007 Concerned intellectuals in Delhi during the launch of a book, Alternative Economic Survey 2006-07, held the government’s neo-liberal policies responsible for ever widening rich-poor divide. Obsessed with what they describe as “growth fundamentalism”, they blamed the government for the sufferings of majority of the people in this country.

22.10.2007 Thousands are migrating to BangladeshÂ’s largest city, Dhaka, on a daily basis having lost earlier means of survival at their rural homes. Heavy rains and floods have impacted over 10 million people in Bangladesh.

19.10.2007 As the Indian state of Orissa reels under poverty and chronic hunger, five billion Indian rupees from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme have been siphoned off by corrupt state officials. Parshuram Rai, Director, Centre for Environment and Food Security, exposes the rot in the state bureaucracy.

11.10.2007 October 10 marks one year since the Child Labour Act banned children from working as domestic servants. Yet millions of children continue to work in domestic and hazardous occupations and are vulnerable to abuse. Save The Children has called for concerted campaigns to save these lost childhoods.

10.10.2007 Handloom weavers in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh are battling poverty and tuberculosis while the government sponsored schemes still elude them. The Asian Human Rights Commission has launched an appeal to the people to urge the government to take action.

07.10.2007 A recent national meet on the educational needs of out-of-school children has called for a database on migrant children and to develop strategies to enfold them into the schooling system. The two-day meeting was organized by Rajasthan UNICEF in alliance with Rajasthan Council for Elementary Education.