Tsunami hit area forced to traffick children

Bhagyaraj used to have a kiosk selling utensils until the Tsunami washed it away. Now he is trying to get a middle man to take his 14 year old to the city to work as a domestic. It has become too hard to feed her at home. He lost two other daughters in the disaster.
Although child trafficking of this kind is common in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the area of Nagapattinam had been protected by its lucrative fishing industry. Now, since the devastation of the tsunami many of the area’s children are being trafficked to the city or quarries to work.
Arul Mani, a local community activist said that;
“Two other girls, 13 and 14, have gone to work as maids, one 14-year-old boy has gone to a stone quarry, three boys were taken to work in Bangalore, two went to aluminium factories,”
With the collapse of the local economy children are very vulnerable to being trafficked into forced labour because their families simply cannot support them. Trafficking and child labour are illegal in India, but they continue to flourish. The Indian government has recently been criticised for not doing enough to combat trafficking.