Despite measures taken by the government and other concerned quarters child labour has increased in the country. The reason behind it is poverty and high inflation, which has touched unprecedented level particularly in the last one decade.
According to educationists, intellectuals, social experts the rate of child labour would continue to grow if effective measures are not implemented practically to control the poverty and inflation rate.
They believe that education has become very expensive and it has gone out of common man’s reach. They said firstly their children fail to get admissions in government run schools because of lower number of seats and secondly, the admission and monthly fees in private institutions are too high, beyond the reach of parents to afford it.
Another common factor behind increase in child labour is the nominal monthly income of a head of a family, whether he is working in a government or a private department. Failing to meet their daily expenses poor families prefer to engage their children in workshops, workstations, transport and even in construction work as labourers.
The children aged between 8-15 years could be seen labouring in different shops, trading centres, workshops etc.
To cite instances in this regard one could easily witness major chunk of children aged between 12 to 16 working as conductors and drivers of vehicles like Suzuki pick-ups on every route of the city to earn bread for their families.
Some of the children associated with transport business like Zeeshan, Afaq, Mohammad Tariq, Imran all in their teens informed that they started their career as cleaner (washing vehicles /conductors) while they were very small. Belonging to a poor family with at least seven to 10 family members they were forced by their parents and relatives to start some work to support the financial burden of the family.
Similarly, some children are seen working in workstations, automobile workshops and service stations, the reason was same as mentioned above. At the end of the day they are paid an amount of Rs50 as their daily wage, they stated.
When this correspondent approached an official spokesman in Ministry for Labour and Overseas Pakistanis, he acknowledged the fact that child labour is growing rapidly despite taking measures by the government. For instance, the federal as well as the provincial governments are providing free education to the children in government and municipal schools besides providing textbooks to them free of cost. But still there is rapid growth in child labour. Once measures are taken to end poverty and check inflation rate, the child labour growth would fall immensely. For this purpose, the government should give a serious thought to adjust the monthly emoluments to such an extent not less than Rs10,000 per month.