An estimated 23 million children are not going to school which shows that child labour has risen to 10 million in the country with about 1.2 million street children. Child labour survey 2006 shows approximately four children are abused daily.
I.A Rehman, Director Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said on the launching ceremony of report 'The State of Pakistan Children 2006' here on Wednesday. Child labour has its roots in poverty, lack of opportunities, huge rate of population growth, unemployment, uneven distribution of wealth and social customs, weak implementation of national and international laws and low priority given to policy makers, they said.
The last child labour survey conducted by the government stated that 3.3 million of the 40 million children in the 5 to 14 age group were found to be economically active on a full-time basis, he said.
Out of the 3.3 million working children, 2.4 million that is 73 percent are boys and 0.9 million that becomes 27 percent are girls and the provincial distribution indicated that the volume of child labour in the Punjab is about 1.9 million that is three-fifth of the child labour in the country, he said.
The second on the list is NWFP where about one million children were working and Sindh has a population of 298,000 child labourers and lowest figure is for Balochistan ie 14,000 due to the lesser number of households reporting child labour.
It must be noted that the government statistics omitted those children who were working in families and small businesses that are not registered with the government and these official figures were released more than 10 years ago and has many loopholes, he said.
It is found that there are 5,800 children working in the surgical industry for 8 to 10 hours, six days a week with no protective gear, the report said. About 717 children are working in tanneries of Kasur, 357 are working in coal mines of Chakwal, 9,584 are manufacturing glass bangles in Hyderabad, 3,500 are working as rag pickers in Islamabad and 2,478 are working in deep fishing sector in Gwadar, the report said.
The report said Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births in Pakistan is 79 and maternal mortality rate per 1,000 live births is 99 in the country, the report said.