Faces smeared black, little hands at work

Karachi
In a chain of around 15 automobile and engineering workshops on the main industrial area road in Mansehra Colony, over 20 children are working.
Some of them, their faces smeared black, were busy helping the mechanics by fetching tools for them. Others were tasked to bring tea and cigarettes from nearby shops. Those who seemed to be new there were keenly watching mechanics at work.
Hussain Ustad proudly said he had trained more than 200 children as car mechanics at his workshop in the past 10 years.
“They mainly belong to poor families and their parents, who can’t afford to send them to schools, request us to train them here,” he added.
“It is a productive skill and changes the lives of these children. Also, it is stopping them from indulging in street crimes and drugs.”
Automobile and engineering workshops are among the dozens of formal and informal industries where working children are basically sent to work so that they can supplement whatever their family’s income is.
Child rights activists have been concerned over the growing trend of children being pushed into labour.
“Generally, these children start working before they attain puberty or finish their proper education,” said Rana Asif Habib, the head of Initiator Human Development Foundation, an NGO working for the welfare of street children.
Globally, there is a decline in the number of child labourers from 200 million in 2000 to 168 million in 2014, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
However, Pakistan is ranked number three in the world with the highest prevalence of child and forced labour, according to the Global Slavery Index 2013.
“It shows the severity of the problem in the country,” said Zahid Thebo, the provincial coordinator of the Society of the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC). “The situation in the southern parts of Sindh and Punjab is the worst when it comes to child labour.”
Child rights organisations complain that there is a dearth of accurate information on the issue in Pakistan.
The only official nationwide survey on child labour conducted by the Federal Bureau of Statistics found that 3.3 million of the 40 million children in the country, between the ages of five and 14, are economically active. However, an ILO survey conducted in 2012 projected a significantly larger number of child labourers in Pakistan at 12 million.
A recent SPARC report, State of Pakistan’s Children Report 2014, shared major findings on child labour. According to the report, there are 264,000 domestic child workers in the country. Thebo said child labour was very common at brick kilns, farms and the bangles and carpet industries. It is estimated that there are 8.52 million home-based workers in the country. The proportion of females in this workforce is 65 percent and a significant proportion of the female workforce comprises girls between the ages of six and 14.
Home-based workers leaders say that these girls support their mothers and other female relatives in meeting the daily tasks assigned to them by the middleman by working 12 or 16 hours daily in conditions that are harsh, unhealthy and hazardous.
Thebo said Rana Sanaullah Abbasi, who is currently serving as the Hyderabad region police chief, has prepared laws for curbing child labour with the help of Supreme Court lawyers, especially Anees Jilani, and officials of the provincial labour department.
“The draft of the bill is ready and SPARC has handed it over to Sharmila Faruqui, an adviser to the chief minister, but she has been unable to table it in the provincial assembly so far,” he said.
Child rights experts say that after the passage of 18th constitutional amendment, the concrete list was abolished, affecting the Employment of Children Act 1991, a federal law.
Thebo said the provincial assemblies need to pass new bills.
Faruqui, while talking with The News, said the provincial labour department was working on the issue and the draft of the bill would soon be presented in the provincial assembly.
“Personally, I think that the age limit for a labourer in the country should be 18 years, but we have to keep the socio-economic situation of the country in mind while preparing laws,” she added.