Curbing smuggling of child jockeys

The government on Tuesday admitted its failure to bring back home the children used as camel jockeys stranded in the Gulf States, while also playing down their numbers, figuring at only 1,000 as against 7,000 reported a few days ago. At a Senate Standing Committee on Labour and Manpower meeting here, Overseas Pakistanis Foundation (OPF) said that it could bring back only 200 out of thousands of children from the Gulf States ever since the matter appeared in the news by media reports a year back.
Presided over by its Chairman, Senator Naeem Hussain Chattha, the meeting appeared to be sceptical of the government's sincerity in the efforts for repatriation of the camel jockeys. However, while condemning use of children as camel jockeys, it asked the OPF to take appropriate steps for early repatriation of the children stranded in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Gulf countries.
The meeting is also reported to have expressed its reservations about the OPF claim that only 1,000 Pakistani children were currently stranded in various Gulf States and being used as camel jockeys. It was reported only recently that out of a total of 10,000 being used as camel jockeys in the Gulf States, 7,000 were Pakistanis, the OPF officials, themselves, having confirmed the report.
However, Minister of State for Labour, Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis is reported to have told the meeting that the OPF had been making all-out efforts in that direction.
But, at the same time, he contended that many people, from remote areas, were willingly sending their children to the Gulf region, and that this impeded government's efforts to put a stop to it. It will be noted that Pakistan has been in the news in the recent past in connection with smuggling of children to the Gulf States for use as camel jockeys.
It will be recalled that earlier last month, the National Assembly Standing Committee on Social Welfare and Special Education was reported to have challenged the government's claims of curbing child smuggling, asking it to make all out efforts to protect children from illegal trafficking. On that occasion, Secretary, Ministry of Social Welfare & Special Education, had given a brief on it to the National Commission for Child Welfare and Development and Pakistan Ageing Programme.
However, though lauding the idea behind the establishment of NCCWD, the committee noted that the commission had failed miserably to deliver in so far as child welfare and protection of their rights is concerned. Members of the committee were reported to have been, generally, of the view that ground realities negated the claims of the NCCWD, the chairperson, specifically and pointedly referring to repatriation of children smuggled to work as camel jockeys.
However, the Secretary was reported to have argued that NCCWD was supposed simply to formulate policies for implementation by the provincial governments. In this regard, he pointed to initiation of programmes, marked for launching in Rahimyar Khan, D.G. Khan, and Sukkur districts for capacity building, aimed at curbing child smuggling, and provide parents with advocacy services to discourage them to sell their children.
The National Assembly body was also apprised of paucity of funds due to which objectives of the NCCWD could not be achieved. As for evident failure of the government to do the needful in this regard, reference may also be made to a news report, appearing only a day earlier.
It revealed that Ministry of Foreign Affairs of UAE, Kuwait, Oman and other Arab states had expressed serious reservations over the failure of law enforcement agencies to curb flow of illegal immigrants to those countries and demanded from Pakistan to repay all expenses incurred over illegal immigrants detained by their respective governments.
However, our foreign office, in turn, reportedly forwarded the demand from UAE, Oman and Kuwait to the Ministry of Interior for action. In the report, under reference, the Arab States had suggested strict punitive action against the illegal immigrants along with their agents or promoters. But strangely enough, the Ministry of Interior is reported to have taken the plea that punishment to the deportees was not possible as they returned home in miserable condition and empty-handed.
Further Pakistan is reported to have conveyed, particularly to the UAE, Oman and Kuwait, that recovery from immigrants is not possible, but that it is planning to devise a comprehensive policy to check human trafficking or illegal immigration. All this, put together, will point to lack of political will, at least, in curbing the menace of human smuggling of which child smuggling forms a part.