‘Not our fault’: Kiln owners up in arms

Govt looking to give Employment of Children Act teeth, says Qadri

BAHAWALPUR/ FAISALABAD/ LAHORE:

Hundreds of brick kiln owners staged demonstrations in various cities of the province on Tuesday to protest against the administration’s drive to eliminate child labour at brick kilns.

In Faisalabad, they carried banners and walked on several roads in the city shouting slogans against the district administration’s raids against child labour.

Brick Kiln Owners Association chairman Haji Muhammad Altaf said the government had issued the Ordinance for the Elimination of Child Labour under which the district administration and the Labour Department had made it impossible for them to run their business.

He said brick kiln owners were dead set against child labour, “because it compromises the quality of bricks made at our kilns”. However, the government is tarnishing our reputation to please its “foreign masters” and is “making us out to be cruel”.

In order to achieve their targets, district administration officials have wrongfully implicated several brick kiln owners, he said.

Altaf said instead of cracking down on brick kiln owners, the government should round up parents of the children working at brick kilns and put them in prison.

He said that the ordinance prohibiting child labour at brick kilns was issued without the kiln owners’ input. He demanded that the government make amendments with their consultation.

He said if the on-going drive against kiln owners was not halted, they would go on an indefinite strike.

‘Stop playing the victim’

The provincial government is committed to implementing the Prohibition of Child Labour at Brick Kilns Ordinance 2016 in its true spirit, Provincial Government Spokesperson Syed Zaeem Hussain Qadri said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The children recovered from brick kilns across the province will be placed into schools over the next three months, he said.

Qadri reprimanded brick kiln owners for going on strike against the ordinance and said if they were truly patriotic, they would work towards improving the living standards of brick kiln workers and would campaign to get their children educated. “Going on a strike gives the wrong message.”

Qadri said the provincial government had already taken the Brick Kilns Owners’ Association into confidence when formulating the ordinance. Since the ordinance was put into effect, close to 500 cases of bonded child labour were reported. He said district administrations and the police had raided 2,517 brick kilns and had registered FIRs and arrested 498 brick kiln owners caught violating the ordinance. He said 201 brick kilns had been sealed.

He said DCOs, DPOs, assistant commissioners and other members of government departments visited several brick kilns daily.

Under the ordinance, those caught violating the law could be fined Rs500,000, awarded six-months imprisonment or the kilns could be sealed.

He said the Labour and Human Resource Department had set up a helpline (0800-55444) where citizens could register complaints regarding child labour at brick kilns.

Child protection units

The government is looking to amend the Employment of Children Act 1991 and introduce severe punishments for those caught violating it, Bahawalpur Commissioner Saqib Zafar said in a meeting with Punjab Child Protection Bureau Director General Fatima Sheikh on Tuesday.

He said under the amended law, those involved in the heinous crime of human trafficking would be sentenced to life imprisonment and would be fined Rs1 million. He said the government was also considering making crimes against children non-bailable offences.

Sheikh said the Child Protection Bureau had planned several measures to ensure the welfare of children. She said the government had allocated Rs530 million for this purpose. On priority was the plan to establish Child Protection Units in all districts of the Punjab, she said.  The district administration informed her that the Rahim Yar Khan District Child Protection Bureau’s building was in the last stage of completion. Close to Rs20 million had been spent on it and it would open towards the end of March. She was told that a separate building had been planned in Bahawalpur district.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2016.