New Delhi, May 2: The army of child workers is growing despite claims by the government of an improvement in the situation and an increase in the number of schemes to rehabilitate them.

The last census, in 2001, showed that the number of child labourers has gone up from 11.59 million in 1991 to 12.66 million in 10 years. But a recent report by Global March Against Child Labour, a non-government organisation, pegged the figure higher.

“Unofficial sources claim between 25 million to 30 million child workers because a significant number of them? in the domestic and agricultural sectors ? are not covered in the census,” the report said.

And all this despite a number of legal and social initiatives launched by the government two decades ago.

The Child Labour Act of 1986 sought to prevent the employment of children in hazardous occupations. The act, however, did not cover sectors like domestic service and agriculture and the urban and rural informal sectors where children work in large numbers.