By Saadia Khalid
Despite their filthy hands busy in a hectic job of collecting litter in the scorching heat, the little scavengers in ragged clothes still grace glowing smiles on their dirty yet innocent faces irrespective of their extreme surroundings.
Roaming mostly in groups, these naive souls get on with their job from dawn to dusk in order to collect maximum litter - their key to earn more bucks - after they pick it from the ground and toss it in the giant bags they often carry on their shoulders, besides talking, playing and enjoying the company of their peers, making the most of their time together.
Most of these scavengers are nomads and live in tents in the suburb areas of big cities and share their personal space with heaps of garbage that might result in the outbreak of dangerous diseases. These children have never had the chance to breathe the air of any educational institution and are socialised to continue their family business of scavenging, which in spite of being the worst form of child labour hardly comes into limelight, as whenever there is some discussion on the issue of child labour, this particular segment of society goes unnoticed most of the times.
According to a recent survey by the Federal Bureau of Statistics, funded by the International Labour Organisation’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), out of a total of 40 million, 3.8 million children between the ages of 5-14 years are working in Pakistan while 50 per cent of these economically active children fall in the age group of 5-9 years. Besides, there has not been a single survey conducted to find out the actual number of children who are involved in the profession of scavenging in their school going age.
It is also worth mentioning that despite scavenging being made punishable under the Employment of Manual Scavengers & Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act 1993 and allocation of funds to rehabilitate the workers, the practice of manual scavenging continues. The 1993 Act declared the employment of scavengers or the construction of dry latrines an offence, punishable with imprisonment up to one year and a fine of Rs2,000. Despite all the laws enacted regarding child labour and scavenging, there are millions of children involved in this horrid practice while the government and NGOs seem feeble over the issue, as nothing noteworthy has been done so far to educate and rehabilitate these unprivileged creatures.