Policy making: Adolescents’ issues examined

A participant proposes that child domestic help be banned.

LAHORE:

Sahil, an NGO, in collaboration with Rutgers World Population Foundation (WPF) and Plan, an international NGO, organised a discussion, “Adolescents-Survival, Development, Protection and Participation” at Avari Lahore.

The WPF and Plan had formulated the National Adolescent Development Policy Framework (NADPF) 2009-2013.

Civil society and media personalities participated in the discussion.

The participants were parcelled into five groups, to focus on child rights, health, education, livelihood and crisis support.

Sajjad Cheema, of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), said, “Labour laws all over the world do no allow for children to work for more than three hours. The Labour Department has no inspectors to check the implementation of labour laws in the Punjab. There is no check on the millions of children working in workshops, factories and offices.”

Cheema spoke about a five-year-old housemaid who was beaten to death by her employers for urinating in the kitchen. Cheema proposed that child domestic labour be outlawed in the country.

PML-Q MPA Seemal Kamran said, “The terms used for orphans and orphanages need to be revisited and revised. The entire language around being an orphan can leave these children scarred for life.

We need a uniform educational system that produces healthy brains without any discrimination.”

Sakina Aslam, assistant national director of SOS villages, said, “Almost 70 per cent of the children they had surveyed had not been registered. Registration of children should be properly regulated. Birth certificates should be issued even if the identity of the father is unknown or if a child loses their father as in the case of flood affected children.”

Abida Javed, a participant, who trains teachers for mentally challenged children said that focusing only on adolescents and not on younger children might result in those children being ignored. She said that the issues discussed should be considered seriously.

Bunyad Foundation manager operations and programme, Riaz Ahmed, said “A child who works at a workshop can earn a livelihood in four years. The same cannot be said of an 18-year-old who receives formal education. Useful technical education must be introduced in schools.”

All five groups will propose a strategy for the implementation of NADPF.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 12^th, 2011.