Sustainable policies: ‘Child labour survey to be held soon’

Government to address, formulate policies to combat child labour

ISLAMABAD: The Punjab government will collaborate with the Unicef, the International Labour Organisation, and the Bureau of Statistics to conduct a provincial child labour survey which will be carried out soon. The survey would help formulate sustainable policies to address child labour.

This was said by Punjab Minister for Manpower and Labour Raja Ashfaq Sarwar on Saturday while he was inspecting various sasta bazaars set up for Ramazan.

He further added that the province-wide survey would take 18 months to complete.

The minister said that the government is considering setting up an authority to collect Workers’ Welfare Fund, EOBI, social security, and other welfare payments, and that records are being computerised to facilitate workers.

“All secondary schools of the Punjab Workers Welfare Board will soon be upgraded to higher secondary level, and so will social security hospitals and dispensaries,” Sarwar added.

He said the Skill Development Programme has started yielding results, as technical institutions have achieved their 2015-2016 targets for imparting vocational and technical education.

Sarwar said that the job-oriented Punjab Skill Development Strategy 2015-2020 has been implemented to ensure better governance, quality and demand-driven training of the youth of Punjab.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 26^th, 2016.