Children at risk

According to the International Labour Organization which marked the World Day Against Child Labour on Tuesday, there are currently at least 73 million children engaged in hazardous work. This constitutes around half of the 152 million children aged between 5 and 17 years who are engaged in child labour. As we know from examples we often see in our own country’s street children, some no more than eight years old work in mines, in fields, in factories and within homes – exposed to long hours of work, dangerous conditions and possible exposure to toxic chemicals. Reports in the past had noted children among those killed in accidents in the unregulated mining industry and also at other work places. While Pakistan has signed the ILO Convention No 182 Against the Worst Forms of Child Labour, it is unfortunate that despite the ratification it is largely unimplemented. According to the ILO, this is also true in at least some 180 other nations which ratified the convention. To correct the problem it suggests that governments work more closely with social partners to identify a list of national sectors in which children are engaged in dangerous work and act to remove them from it. The ILO has pointed out that the employment of children in such work is closely linked to failures in providing them education and other opportunities to improve their lives.

This is certainly a matter Pakistan needs to take up at various levels. We need to bring up a generation of young people who are able as adults to take up work in various sectors and perform it skilfully and against a decent wage. It has also been established that children are most often employed because those who employ them can get away with paying less or nothing at all while children, unlike adults, are also unable to speak out for their rights. The presence of a large number of children working behind closed doors in the domestic sector has been highlighted recently by the cases of young maids who faced torture at the hands of employers and in some cases grievous injuries as a result of this. The case involving child maid Tayyaba has recently been taken note of by the courts. But we also need other actions. A consensus has to be built that child labour is unacceptable and that as a first step we need to keep our promises to the international community and rescue children who put themselves at risk every day by going out to work in dangerous environments.