Child rights: School enrolment drive to help fight child labour

NGOs on board to assist with enrolment drive and fill the gaps.

SARGODHA:

Following recent calls by the DCO to implement legislation to penalise parents who refused to send their children to school under the law, several NGOs and the Child Protection Bureau (CPB) have decided to coordinate with the district administration in this regard.

On Sunday, the Society for the Protection of the Rights of th Child (SPARC) demanded a blanket ban on child domestic labour and said that they would coordinate with district administration all over the Punjab in this regard. “The primary school induction drive is a key factor in helping us weed out which children are not being registered for school. These children are the ones to focus on. We need to see how many of them are being employed as labourers and then take coordinated action,” said SPARC volunteer Salman Kashif. Kashif said that the NGOs and child right groups could use the primary school enrolment drive lists to identify gaps and target children who were not being sent to school. “We can fill the gaps and provide these kids with shelter. They are the ones most probably being exploited,” he said.

SPARC strongly condemn murder of another innocent domestic child labourer Aaliya in Lahore last week. “This is the second incident like this in a week. Children employed as domestic labourers are grossly mistreated and someone needs to raise awareness that not only is employing children as workers morally wrong it is also illegal,” said SPARC administrator Nida Saleem.

Child Protection Bureau (CPB) worker Haider Shah said that the CPB intended to coordinate with district and education authorities in registering the numbers of children currently not being enrolled in primary school. “There is no excuse to not put kids in primary school which is now free (government schools). The parents not putting their kids in school probably have them begging or working and that makes it easier for us to track them down,” he said.

The employment of children especially girls in homes is a common phenomena in Pakistan. Since there is little or no concept or even opportunity of education, most parents bring their little girls and boys to the city to work in homes. “Now that the government has made education at the primary level free there is no legitimate reason for parents to send their children to work as labourers beside profit. It is a parent’s duty to ensure their children are studying rather than earning on their behalf,” Haider said.

Honouring the pact

Pakistan has signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that makes it imperative for the state to provide children their basic right to education among many other rights such as health, safety, security etc. At the same time Pakistan has signed International Labour Organization Conventions that sets the age when children can and cannot start work. Pakistan has a specific law Employment of Children Act (ECA) 1999, which bans the labour of children under 14 in certain occupations, unfortunately child domestic labour is not a part of the schedule of banned occupations of the ECA

NGO workers, district government and education officials have vowed to come together and deal with this issue. “We need to collaborate in this regard. If we do it right then we might be able to put children in school and reduce child labour and exploitation simultaneously,” said Sargodha DCO Azmat Mehmood.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 30^th, 2011.