Child labour: 11-year-old brutally beaten for not serving tea on time

An eleven-year-old boy was brutally beaten by the owner for showing up late for work.

RAHIM YAR KHAN: An eleven-year-old boy who works at a shop on Shahi Road was brutally beaten by the owner for showing up late for work on Friday.

Passers-by saved the boy and said that they had seen him hung upside down from the ceiling fan. “He was being beaten with a cricket bat and was screaming when we took him down,” said an eyewitness, Liaqat.

Eleven-year-old Muhammad Nasir who works at a burger shop earns Rs1,000 a month. “My parents don’t make a lot of money and they can’t really afford to put me in school so I work at the shop,” Nasir told reporters later.

Adam Wali resident Khuda Bukhsh, who is Muhammad Nasir’s father, said that he transported goods from various markets on his donkey cart every day.

“There are days when I make nothing and other days when I can bring home food so my son has been helping the family,” Buksh said. “The fact that he works doesn’t mean that his employers have the right to abuse him. He is in the hospital because of what happened,” the father added. On Friday, when shop owner Chaudhry Niaz asked Nasir to get him some tea the boy was late and as a result Rasool tied him up and beat him. “I was told to get him some tea but I was also waiting on some customers and it took me longer than usual,” Nasir told reporters, adding that Rasool later called him in to the shop and tied him up to the ceiling fan and beat him with a bat.

Chaudhry Niaz started beating Nasir violently and his screams alerted several passers-by who came to the child’s rescue. “It was a dreadful sight. The boy was screaming to be forgiven but Rasool just kept on hitting him until we stopped him,” Liaqat said. Eyewitnesses said that Rasool stopped hitting Nasir when passers-by intervened but the moment the crowd began to disperse he began beating Nasir again. “The second time he took burning tongs from the stove and began chasing after the boy,” said an eye witness at the shop, Asim.

Following the incident, a commission agent and Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) leader Chaudhry Zahoor Gujjar forced Rasool to let the boy go and also called the police to the scene. Seeing the police, Rasool fled from the scene.

Police officials took Nasir to the hospital for a medical check up. Police officials also registered a case against Rasool after doctors confirmed that the boy had been severely beaten and had suffered a head injury.

Nasir’s father Khuda Bukhsh said he had sent his son to earn some money as they were so poor but he would not accept anyone torturing his son. “I want the man to be caught and made an example of,” he demanded. District officer (Labour) Syed Zaighum Abbas Bokhari said that child labor and torture on children were both crimes and the punishment for these crimes was imprisonment and a Rs2,000 fine. “The shop owner needs to be caught,” Bokhari said, adding that the Labour Department was working to help Nasir’s parents secure stable employment so the boy could be put in school.

The names of the people have been changed to protect the child’s identity.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 6^th, 2011.