The bane of child labour

A survey report presented at a seminar jointly hosted by the ILO and the Federal Ministry of Information on Friday, pointed out that the scourge of child labour is spreading rather than receding in the country. There are over 21 million child labourers between the ages of 10 and 14 years, that is double the number of the 2005 estimates put out by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Two obvious reasons account for this dismal situation: one, of course, is the high rate of population growth and the other rising poverty levels. Speaking at the seminar, ILO Country Director, Donglin Li, pointed out that the government has achieved success in cleaning some of the areas, such as the soccer ball industry in Sialkot, and rehabilitating more than 100,000 child workers across Pakistan who have been engaged in carpet weaving, glass bangles, domestic labour, coal mining, deep sea fishing, auth workshops, brick kilns, leather tanneries, as well as rag picking.
It needs to be noted that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1989, not long afterwards ie, in 1990, Pakistan ratified it as a mark of its commitment to eradicate child labour.
As per the convention it pledged to promote "the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation, from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education or to be harmful to the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development." As important as it is to achieve these goals, realistically speaking Pakistan is not expected to fulfil its commitment on this account in the near future.
In a country like Pakistan laws, such as the ones related to the preceding convention, can be helpful in the formal production sector, or in the case of non-industrial labour in the big cities. But they have a limited application because of the high incidence of poverty which exists in its worst forms in the rural areas. The issue, in fact, is quite complicated. The poor can ill-afford to send their offspring to schools or vocational training institutions. Hence, there is little option for their children than to start working at a tender age to supplement incomes. What can help are well thought-out interventions by society.
Collaborative public and private partnership programmes for creating educational and skill training programmes would be the most important step in that direction. ILO Director had another important suggestion to make. He urged the Pakistani media, which has an extensive reach in all parts of the country, to come forward and play a frontline role in educating people and mobilising social action to eradicate child labour. This, needless to say, would be a favour not just to those who live in deprivation, but also to the society as a whole.