It was a cloudy day in May when I entered Office at 8.45 in the morning. As usual my colleague had already come in and was in the process of ordering the first tea of the day from a canteen in the next door office. I am an avid tea drinker and have numerous cups during the day. She ordered tea for both of us and the usual person did not get the tea. At first we did not notice the age of the person as we were chatting, then colleague mentioned that he looked a bit young to be working.

CRY has a Child Protection Policy the implementation of which I led.  As soon as my colleague said that, my antenna started vibrating as one of the sections of the policy is that CRY employees should not accept services from any business hiring child labour (anyone who is under 18 years of age and working). So when the boy came to take the cups, I asked him his age and he said that he is not 18 yet. I asked him if he had any document as I did not want to enforce the policy wrongly. He showed me his Aadhar Card from which it was clear that he was under 18.

I immediately mailed the entire office that they should settle the bills of the canteen and stop ordering from him. From the next day there were no orders going to him from the CRY office. I instructed the security to tell him the reason for the ban, the intention as that after a few days someone from our team that works with these issues at the grassroots would talk to him on why we are doing this and explain that it is not an arbitrary decision.

However before we could send someone, in a few days the owner came to office to meet me. It turned out that someone in office had told him not to hire minors a few months ago but he had not heeded it. He then assured me that he would not hire anyone under 18. I warned him that this was the last chance since he had not heeded warnings and the next time he violated the conditions, he would be banned permanently. He agreed and the ban was lifted with the stern warning. The CRY staff cooperated whole heartedly during the ban. It’s time we started saying ‘no’ to such atrocities and took action by ourselves. All it takes is one person to make a difference!

Chandrashekhar Ponda (General Manager, Human Resources, CRY – Child Rights and You)

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