Child Labour in Pakistan

Child Labour in Pakistan

Tears tracing lines of dirt on his face, six-year-old Nabeel Mukhtar cries while crouching on a pavement to scrub motorbikes, his job for nine hours a day, six days a week.

He is one of millions of children driven into labour by poverty in a country where the government is seen as too corrupt and ineffective to care for its citizens, even the young and helpless.

“I want to study and become a doctor but we don’t have any money,” said Mukhtar, who helps his family make ends meet.

Rising food and fuel prices and a struggling economy have forced many families to send their children to search for work instead of to the classroom.

God has given human beings the boon of wisdom and discretion to think upon the signs of the universe and to draw conclusions. That is the reason why they disclose the hidden facts of it and its structure and have made remarkable progress in many walks of life. Children are the flowers of heaven. They are the most beautiful and purest creation of God. They are innocent both inwardly and outwardly. No doubt, they are the beauty of this world. Early in the morning when the children put on different kinds of clothes and begin to go to schools for the sake of knowledge, we feel a specific kind of joy through their innocence.

But there are also other children, those who cannot go to schools due to financial problems, they only watch others go to schools and can merely wish to seek knowledge. It is due to many hindrances and difficulties; desperate conditions that they face in life. Having been forced to kill their aspirations, dreams and other wishes, they are pressed to earn a living for themselves and for their families. It is also a fact that there are many children who play a key role in sustaining the economically life of their family without which, their families would not be able to make ends meet. These are also part of our society who has forgotten the pleasures of their childhood. When a child in addition to getting education, earns his livelihood, this act of earning a livelihood is called as child Labour. The concept of child Labour got much attention during the 1990s when European countries announced a ban on the goods of the less-developed countries because of child Labour. 

The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines child Labour as:
 1- when a child is working during early age
2- he overworks or gives over time to Labour

3- he works due to the psychologically, socially, and materialistic pressure
4- he becomes ready to Labour on a very low pay

Another definition states:

“Child Labour” is generally speaking work for children that harms them or exploits them in some way (physically, mentally, morally or blocking access to education),
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund(UNICEF) defines “child” as anyone below the age of 18, and “child Labour” as some type of work performed by children below age 18. (UNICEF)

Child Labour is an important and a serious global issue through which all and sundry countries of the world are directly or indirectly affected, but, it is very common in Latin America, Africa and Asia. According to some, in several Asian countries’ 1/10 manpower consists of child Labour. In India the number of children between the ages of 10-14 has crossed above 44 million, in Pakistan this number is from 8 to 10 million, in Bangladesh 8-12 million, in Brazil 7 million, whereas their number is 12 million in Nigeria.

In Pakistan children aged 5-14 are above 40 million. During the last year, the Federal Bureau of Statistics released the results of its survey funded by ILO’s IPEC (International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour). The findings were that 3.8 million children age group of 5-14 years are working in Pakistan out of total 40 million children in this age group; fifty percent of these economically active children are in age group of 5 to 9 years. Even out of these 3.8 million economically active children, 2.7 million were claimed to be working in the agriculture sector. Two million and four hundred thousand (73%) of them were said to be boys. 

During the year 2001 and 2002 the government of Pakistan carried out a series of consultation of tripartite partners and stakeholders (Labour Department, trade unions, employers and NGOs) in all the provinces. The objective was to identify the occupations and the categories of work, which may be considered as hazardous under the provisions of ILO Convention 182. As a result of these deliberations, a national consensus list of occupations and categories of work was identified, which is given below:

1. Nature of occupation-category of work
2. Work inside underground mines over ground quarries, including blasting and assisting in blasting
3. Work with power driven cutting machinery like saws, shears, and guillotines, (Thrashers, fodder cutting machines, also marbles)
4. Work with live electrical wires over 50V.
5. All operation related to leather tanning process e.g. soaking, dehairing, liming chrome tanning, deliming, pickling defleshing, and ink application.
6. Mixing or application or pesticides insecticide/fumigation.
7. Sandblasting and other work involving exposure to free silica.
8. Work with exposure to ALL toxic, explosive and carcinogenic chemicals e.g. asbestos, benzene, ammonia, chlorine, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, caustic soda, phosphorus, benzidene dyes, isocyanides, carbon tetrachloride, carbon disulphide, epoxy, resins, formaldehyde, metal fumes, heavy metals like nickel, mercury chromium, lead, arsenic, beryllium, fiber glass, and
9. Work with exposure to cement dust (cement industry)
10. Work with exposure to coal dust
11. Manufacture and sale of fireworks explosives
12. Work at the sites where Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) are filled in cylinders.
13. Work on glass and metal furnaces
14. Work in the clothe printing, dyeing and finishing sections
15. Work inside sewer pipelines, pits, storage tanks
16. Stone crushing
17. Lifting and carrying of heavy weight specially in transport industry (15b kg and above)
18. Work between 10 pm to 8 am (Hotel Industry)
19. Carpet weaving
20. Working 2 meter above the floor
21. All scavenging including hospital waste
22. Tobacco process ( including Niswar) and Manufacturing
23. Deep fishing (commercial fishing/ sea food and fish processing
24. Sheep grazing and wool industry
25. Ship breaking
26. Surgical instrument manufacturing specially in vendors workshop
27. Bangles glass, furnaces

Now we can easily imagine in the light of above mentioned facts and figures how the nation’s future namely children are deprived of pleasures of life, ignorance has reduced their abilities of thinking right or differentiating between right and wrong, as well as their life-chances, to their non-access to education. It is true that child Labour is not an isolated phenomenon.

Frequent political crises in Pakistan means the nation’s leaders are unlikely to end child labour, or a host of other problems from a Taliban insurgency to power cuts, any time soon.

“From the bottom of my heart, I want to send my son to school but we have so many expenses… We struggle to put food on our table”, said Mukhtar’s mother, Shazia, who also has a four-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter.

Her husband, Mohammed, a street barber, earns only Rs7,500 a month, not enough to support the family.

“He’s learning to work and he also earns around Rs300-400. So what’s wrong in that. We are poor,” Mohammed said of the boy.

Pakistan needs to take immediate measures to stabilise growing budget pressures and to raise interest rates to contain rising inflation, the International Monetary Fund warned on Monday.

Economic pressures are forcing young Pakistanis, like teenager Noor Shah and his three brothers, to leave home in search of work.

They now live in a tiny room above a grimy tea shop where they toil all day in Karachi.

“I have so many dishes to wash. When I get tired the men serving tea become very angry with me. They swear and shout,” said Shah, who is from Balochistan.

Others, like 11-year-old labourer Kashif, are subjected to harsher treatment.

“If he makes a mistake I’ll hit him,” said his 19-year-old supervisor, Tanveer Shehzad, who said he had endured the same hardship as a child labourer.

It is an outcome of a multitude of socio-economic factors and has its roots in poverty, lack of opportunities, high rate of population growth, unemployment, uneven distribution of wealth and resources, outdated social customs and norms and plethora of other factors. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) the daily income of 65.5% people of Pakistan is below 2 U.S. dollars a day. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Report, 47 million people in Pakistan are leading lines below the line of poverty, whereas the Social Policy Development Centre (SDPC) Karachi has stated in one of its reports that the ratio of poverty in Pakistan was 33% during 1999 that increased in 2001 and reached 38%. The ratio of poverty in the current year is around 30%.

Consider the point that if 30% of our country’s total population is leading life below the poverty-line wherein the people are deprived of basic necessities of life like clothing, shelter, food, education and medication, the children of these people will be forced to become Labourers or workers in order to survive. Another reason of child Labour in Pakistan is that our people don’t have the security of social life. There is no aid plan or allowance for children in our country. Class-based education system is another reason for increasing child Labour; villages lack standardized education systems and as a result, child Labour is on increase in rural areas. The government has not put its laws into practice to stop child Labour in our country. Employers after exploiting child Labour, extract a large surplus, whereas child Labour, despite increasing poverty, unemployment and other problems, are pressed to do anything and everything for their livelihood and the survival of their families. Child Labour is a complex problem which demands a range of solutions. There is no better way to prevent child Labour than to make education compulsory. The West understood this a long time ago. Laws were enacted very early to secure continued education for working children; and now they have gone a step forward, and required completion of at least the preliminary education of the child before he or she starts work.

Government needs to do more               

Up to 10 million children are estimated to be working in Pakistan, says Mannan Rana, child and adolescent protection specialist at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The latest government figures, showing three million child labourers, date back to 1996, underscoring how scant attention has been paid to documenting the problem, which is likely to get worse given the makeup of the fast-growing population.

The plight of child labourers in Pakistan came under international scrutiny when it was discovered that children were hand-stitching soccer balls in the town of Sialkot.

Foreign sports equipment companies are wary of any hint of association with child exploitation. One stopped orders in 2006 from a Pakistan-based supplier of hand-stitched soccer balls, saying the factory had failed to correct labour compliance violations.

But the outcry hasn’t helped much.

“The problem is that the whole industry has moved into private homes, which has made it a bit difficult to monitor if child labour is being used,” said Hussain Naqi, the national co-ordinator of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

“This is not just an issue in Sialkot, child labour is occurring all across Pakistan in very dangerous sectors like glass bangle manufacturing, cleaning of oil tankers, poultry farms, motor workshops, brick kilns and small hotels.”

On Monday, the collapse of a three-storey factory in the city of Lahore after a gas explosion highlighted dangers faced by child labourers.

“I was inside the building when the blast happened. Two other boys were with me and they started running,” said eight-year-old Asad, a labourer in the veterinary product facility.

“I don’t know where they went or if they are alive.”

His sobbing mother said crushing poverty had left her no choice but to send her son to work in such conditions.

Pakistan spends less than 2% of its gross domestic product on education, which translates into a lack of skills amongst the younger population, pushing them onto the street in search of work.

By comparison, just over 17% of 2011-12 state spending went to defence, though some experts put the figure at 26%.

“The problem is there and we are not in a state of denial,” said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, social sector special assistant to the prime minister, adding that about 45% of Pakistan’s population of almost 180 million is below the age of 22.

But Pakistan’s leaders are often too consumed by infighting, or tension with the military, to address child welfare.

In recent months, Pakistan has been gripped by rumours of a possible military coup and the ongoing tussle between the Supreme Court and the government is preoccupying the leadership.

With little government protection, children keep falling into the same vicious circle of exploitation.

“It is all very damaging for a child’s psychology,” said Salma Jafar, executive director at Social Innovations, a human rights advocacy group.

“Once you are abused, you grow up with that abuse.”

Twelve-year-old Mohammed Naeem, the eldest of three orphans, ran away from his first boss. He could not take the verbal and physical abuse.

But his new work, scraping rust all day for 25 rupees at a mechanics shop to feed his sisters, is still gruelling.

“I don’t see any other life for myself. What can I do. I’m helpless. The government is doing nothing for us,” said the boy, wearing soiled clothing and open, oversized sandals.

There is strict need to stop child Labour in this country. Awareness must be raised and the attention of parents ought to be diverted to the education of their children. Child Labour Laws should be put into practice strictly. In addition, the educational system of the country-must be reshaped and restructured according to national development goals. The orphans and other deserving children must be helped financially on a prolonged basis. It is also essential to eliminate child Labour from the country, that the political, economical and social system of the country are need to be reshaped and such steps taken that make child Labour in this country a crime. They should bring on the well-being of a lay man, good governance and end to exploitative thinking. If we succeed to act upon these principles, our country can easily get rid of this problem i.e. child Labour. The agreement that has recently been approved by Pakistan, Norway and ILO to eradicate child Labour must be given importance and we hope that our rulers must put this agreement into practice using all means at their disposal.