Govt censured for not ensuring rights of children

Rights activists lament non-utilisation of budget allocated for children's rights

KARACHI: Rights activists lamented on Friday the government's failure to utilise the budget allocated for ensuring rights of children. Sharing the official data, they bemoaned the fact that child labour, domestic slavery, corporal punishment and sexual abuse of children were continuing despite the allocation of significant amount in the budget to deal with these wrongs.

The activists had gathered at a public forum organised by the Child Rights Movement (CRM), a network of civil society organisations. It was pointed out at the forum that the government had been allocating funds in every budget for conducting a child labour survey in Sindh to ascertain the actual figures of children involved in labour work in the province but the survey never took place.

"The labour department in the last year's budget earmarked Rs54 million for this purpose and Rs13 million were released but no survey was conducted," said Kashif Bajeer, the secretary of CRM, adding that the government had been making promises to conduct the survey for the last nine years but nothing has been done.



The speakers also highlighted the ineffective use of funds allocated for the nutrition support programme, primary education, health, maternal neonatal child health programme, child survival programme, maternity homes and remand homes for juvenile offenders.

Speakers pointed out that the health department planned to establish maternity homes in various areas of Karachi including PIB Colony, Soldier Bazaar, Patel Para and Jahangir Road. In this respect, the government allocated Rs199 million, of which only Rs38 million has so far been released and most of the schemes continue to be in a fix.

Apart from this, the government also planned to establish a paediatric cardiac unit at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases for which it allocated Rs1.74 billion. However, this project has also not seen the light of day. "The finance department has also released Rs100 million on the directives of the chief minister to expedite the work on the cardiac unit, but relevant authorities are not serious to [complete the project]," Bajeer said.

The government's failure in implementing the law pertaining to children issues is a matter of concern, civil society activist Iqbal Detho said.



"The Sindh Assembly took lead in passing Child Marriage Law in April 2014, declaring marriage below the age of 18 punishable by law. However, three years have passed since the law was approved  and it has yet to be properly implemented," Detho said, adding that in a similar case, a law was passed by the Sindh Assembly for providing free and compulsory education to all children between ages of five and 16 years but it was not implemented.

The participants discussed at length the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000, expressing dismay over its non-implementation. "Since the promulgation of the ordinance, no free legal aid has been provided to children in the jail," one of the participants claimed, adding that there was a dire need for creating awareness about children's rights.

Civil Society Support Programme Chief Executive Officer Noor Mohammad said that despite the allocation of Rs21 billion this year for development projects in the education department, more than six million children were out of school and 5,483 schools were still closed in Sindh. He also brought up the issue of deaths of children in Tharparkar. "There is no lack of funds but lack of will on the part of authorities concerned," he said.



Concluding the event, the speakers demanded the government implement the law and utilise the budget allocated for children's rights.