Pakistan : 10 millions d'enfants au travail

Dawn
July 26th, 2006.

Staff reporter

10 million children in labour

Islamabad, July 25th: Some ten million children were engaged in various kinds of labour, and the ever-increasing poverty was the main reason for this dismal state of affairs.

This was stated at a seminar on "Child Labour-The end of Innocence" organised by the Society for Human Rights and Prisoners Aid (SHARP). Speakers challenged government's poverty estimates and criticised it for funding figures. They criticised the government for not following the national and international commitments and taking concrete steps to eliminate the poverty, the route cause of forced labour.

Speaking on the occasion, MR Saifullah Chaudhry of International Labour Organization (ILO) said, there was a pressing need to streamline the educational system according to the market's requirements. Presently the education system only provided work force for the formal economy, and a yawing gap of informal economy was being filled through untrained child labourers. He called for the need of setting up more vocational training centres which could provide labour according to the present needs of the market.

Tahira Abdullah, a human rights activist, said that the number of child labourers was much higher than the government claimed. She said that government and international agencies did not include informal, seasonal and transitional workers into the figures and surveys. She said that the existing laws totally failed to protect the rights of children and prevent the child labour. She appreciated the role of ILO and UNICEF for their service towards combating child labour. She lamented that child Labour was not on the agenda of the government in its millennium development goals.

Mr Bashir Tahir of Asian Development Bank stated that not only a large number of local children were in the child labour but a considerable number of Afghan refugee children were also part of child labour. He said that these children were not counted in the surveys and figures being refugees in the country. He said that exploitation starts when a person was forced to leave his place/ country and then she/he has endless miseries. He said that approximately 90 per cent of workers at brick kilns were Afghan refugees who were badly exploited by the owners.

Speakers stressed the role of government and the society to work together for combating this evil. Speakers suggested proper survey to find real facts and figures of chills labours, control of population growth, utilisation of reasons for elimination of child labour, better facilities of education and proper and effective implementation of constitutional and legal instruments.

Earlier, Mr Syed Liaqat Banori Chairman (SHARP) welcomed the participants and highlighted the activities of his organization.