Annual Report 2008-2009 7.6 During the year 2008-2009, one of the Special Rapporteurs of NHRC conducted a review of the status of implementation of the BLSA Act in the State of Bihar in April 2008. A gist of the Special Rapporteur’s observations and recommendations, as contained in his report, is given below. State Review of Bihar 7.7 The visit to the District of Muzaffarpur in Bihar revealed that 51 residents belonging to the District who had migrated out of the State in search of work were working as bonded labourers. On identification, all the 51 were released from bondage and later brought back to Muzaffarpur for rehabilitation purposes. However, till date, all of them have not been fully rehabilitated. Out of the total numbers who were brought back to Muzzaffarpur, 11 were children in the age group of 10 to 15 and belonged to a minority community. Eight of these children were residents of Chit Bhagwatipur village. They were lured into employment by a recruiting agent who was also from the same village. The agent acted as a middleman and took all the children to a zari manufacturing unit in Delhi. These children were spotted by an NGO, namely, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, who facilitated the release and repatriation of all the children back to Muzaffarpur. 7.8 During the course of the visit made by the Special Rapporteur, only five out of eight children were located. On interrogation, the children revealed that they had worked for a zari manufacturing unit in Gadi Shera Mohalla of Delhi for almost 18 to 20 hours. During their stay, the children were not given any wages except three meals a day. The Head of the Village Panchayat (Mukhiya) of Chit Bhagwatipur disclosed that births in the village were not being registered under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act. In the absence of the same, it was a little difficult to determine the correct age of the children in the village. The Panchayat had no inkling as to when people move out of the village either on account of their own volition or when approached by the agents/middlemen who recruited them on behalf of employers residing outside the village/district/State. It later transpired that recruitment of children by recruiting agents at a very tender, formative and impressionable stage of their development to districts within and outside Bihar is an on-going phenomenon. These kinds of movements usually took place in a surreptitious manner and the Village Panchayat had no clue about it even though work rendered by children at tender age especially in a hazardous occupation like zari manufacturing is clearly at the cost of health, safety and total development of children. According to the Special Rapporteur, it was distressing to know from the Mukhiya that he had no information about the functioning of the Village Primary and Upper Primary Schools. 7.9 In recent years, no survey had been conducted for identification of bonded labourers in the State of Bihar. Yet, the State Labour Department maintained that bonded labourers were being identified by government functionaries and civil society organizations and the number of bonded labourers identified during the last 5 years was as under:- 95