Survey under way to find number of kids caughtin child labour

The Sindh government is conducting a survey in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) to ascertain the number of children caught in child labour in Sindh so that they could be provided education and skilled training for formal employment when they attain the appropriate age.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said this on Monday during a meeting with a delegation of the AOTS. He said the Sindh Factories Act, 2015 prohibited the children below the age of 14 years from working in a factory.

Sindh Labour Secretary Rasheed Solangi informed the CM that the survey would be completed by the end of 2019. He added that in order to implement the minimum wage and eradicate child labour, a minister’s task force headed by the labour director and comprising prominent labour leaders and representatives of the Employers Federation of Pakistan (EFP) and chambers of commerce and industry had been constituted and notified.

The meeting was informed that the minimum monthly wage had been fixed at Rs16,200 for unskilled workers and during the current financial year, the Sindh government had fixed the minimum monthly wage at Rs17,500. The AOTS delegation and EFP chief Majyd Aziz assured the CM of designing job-oriented technical training courses for children and youth so that they could be employed at industries when they were old enough to work there.

The CM also offered investment opportunities to the visiting delegation. He said the Dhabeji Special Economic Zone was being developed by the provincial government for investors. Labour Minister Murtaza Baloch also briefed the delegation about measures taken by his department for the labourers’ welfare.