Patna: The state labour department on Thursday launched a child labour tracking system to monitor progress made by rehabilitated child labourers in the state.

"We have launched a child labour helpline to report incidents of child labour," labour minister Vijay Kumar Sinha said. "People can use the WhatsApp number 9471229133 to register complaints. The child labour tracking system has been launched to track the rehabilitation process of the freed child labour victims.

"We's provided Rs 25,000 from the chief minister's relief fund to each of the 1,219 child labour victims who are registered under the system. We also provide Rs 3,000 to them as immediate relief," he added.

Labour department principal secretary Dipak Kumar Singh said: "We had already revised the minimum wages of workers - Rs 247 for general works and 237 for agricultural labourers. Till date, 2,169 bonded labourers have been freed under Bonded Labour System Abolition Act, 1976. A total of 492 bonded labourers were freed under the central scheme for rehabilitation of bonded labour in 2016, out of which 225 had been given Rs 20,000 per head from the corpus fund provided by the central government for their rehabilitation."

Singh also said that the Bihar Shops and Establishment Act,1953, will be repealed and replaced with a new law, the bill for which will be presented to the state cabinet for approval very soon.

"The National Career Service portal is playing an important role," Singh said. "A total of 8.07 lakh applicants (from Bihar) are registered on the portal and 30,376 boys and girls have been selected for job appointments in various companies. We have also created seven new industrial training institutes in seven districts under the chief minister's seven resolves. They havestarted providing training.

"On the skill development front, we have established 1,598 skill centres including 534 centres built by the state, where 2,29,489 students completed training and 1,00,750 are undergoing training under the Bihar Skill Development Mission. "

According to the 2011 census, about 11 lakh children (5 to 14 years) were working in the state, whereas only four child labour cases had been registered from 2014 to 2016, according to government data.