Activists call for enforcing child labour laws

Say commission should be set up through act of assembly


Mariam Shafqat September 10, 2017
PHOTO: EXPRESS

LAHORE: The government should take effective measures to implement children specific laws enacted in the province.

This was crux of the views expressed at a press conference titled ‘Poor Implementation of Laws’, organised on Saturday at Lahore Press Club by the Punjab Child Rights Movement, a coalition of civil society organisations, working to promote and protect rights of children in the province.

Child Rights Movement and Children Advocacy Network (CAN Pakistan) Coordinator Rashida Qureshi called for strengthening-departmental coordination among relevant government departments which were key stakeholders in promotion and protection of children’s rights to get positive results of the initiated programmes.

She reiterated the demand of Child Rights Advocacy Groups to establish an independent and empowered commission on the rights of children in Punjab through an act of assembly.

Child rights activist Iftikhar Mubarak said that the government did not pay attention towards implementation of children specific laws.



He said that several laws enacted in the past by Punjab Provincial Assembly, including the Punjab Destitute and Neglected Children Act 2004, the Punjab Free and Compulsory Education Act 2014, the Punjab Prohibition of Child Labour at Brick Kilns Act 2016 and the Punjab Restriction on Employment of Children Act 2016, haven’t been implemented.

He urged the media to support child rights campaigns and demanded the government include child laws in the curricula at every school, college and university across the country.

He said that the government was a key stakeholder in the Regional Action Plan for prevention and elimination of child labour developed under the umbrella of South Asia Initiative to End Violence Against Children (SAIEVAC), an apex body of SAARC.

“The government has agreed for development of National and Provincial Action Plan to end child labour while taking into account national contexts, priorities and peculiarities,” he said.

Child Rights Movement Senior Member Bushra Khaliq said that UN Human Rights Committee in 2017 urged Pakistan as state party to take all measures necessary to put an end to child labour through enforcing laws rigorously on child labour and strengthen labour inspection mechanisms.

Khaliq said that beside many appeals, letters and other reminders to Government of Punjab, any concrete action could not be introduced to curb the menace of contemporary form of slavery- domestic child labour.

Advocate Ahmar Majeed pointed out the discrepancies in the defined age in two of the recent laws, which reflected that the government was not seriously considering its international obligations. He added that Pakistan was going to be reviewed in Human Rights Council in November 2017 so it was high time when the government could improve its implementation of children related laws.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10th, 2017.

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