World Day Against Child Labour 2023: Ali Merchant lashes out at the people who force underage workers into child labour| Exclusive

After having carved a name for himself in the world of entertainment as an actor in shows like ‘Ssshhhh...Phir Koi Hai’, ‘Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai’, ‘Yeh Hai Aashiqui’, ‘Sadda Haq’ (season 2), ‘Vikram Betaal Ki Rahasya Gatha’ and others. Besides proving his mettle as an actor in the aforementioned shows, Ali Merchant also exhibited his talent as an anchor, DJ and a music producer as well.

Today, on the occasion of ‘World Day Against Child Labour’, Ali Merchant spoke exclusively to OTTplay about his thoughts on this day. While expressing his reasons responsible for child labour, Ali Merchant said, "Many times, we see the small children selling articles at signals or cleaning the dashboards of the cars. These children are made to stand at places like traffic signals and are made to beg from the vehicle owners and passengers. In my opinion, the main reason behind child labour is unplanned families, which leads to extreme poverty for BPL (Below Poverty Line) people. Additionally, the children work for less than the minimum daily wage and possibly, that is why the child labour has become so common these days.”

When asked about what steps that he feels the government should take to stop child labour, Ali replied, “Better sex education for the uneducated. Free distribution of contraceptives for the underprivileged. Additionally, one also needs to look into providing mandatory education for all the children and also to be having strict laws against families who are pushing their children to earn money by doing manual labour. I strongly feel that strict punishment should be levied against the firms hiring children to work."

In the same breath, Ali also spoke about the punishments that should be given to the people who force children to do work. He said, “Their businesses should be seized and shut down. Their licence should be revoked, and they should never be allowed to start a business again. Long jail time for people hitting children as house help."

On the professional front, Ali Merchant is in talks for two prestigious OTT projects and also a couple of plum projects in Bollywood, which he says will be announced soon.