Countering child labour

The type of abuse children suffer at the hands of their hirers is simply baffling

Present-day Pakistan does not seem to be existing in the 21^st century in many aspects but one particular dimension in which no heed is paid at all is oppression of the weak. In a society where some humans are more equal than others, the weak can be identified on the basis of division — lower religious caste, lower social class, weaker sex, or juvenile population. Child labour in the Indian subcontinent, in general, and Pakistan, in particular, runs on the meek shoulders of children hailing from religious minorities or lower castes and belonging to families with weak financial standing. Domestic workers, like maids, are usually girls because of their docile nature along with their parents’ need to earn through employment of all children, with boys usually employed at workshops or for field jobs.

While people around the globe commemorate the World Day Against Child Labour in June each year and are working towards eradicating child labour in all its forms by 2025, Pakistan is still nurturing the malady at toxic levels. A major hurdle is societal incognizance and obliviousness of our disdainful attitude towards the problem and the resultant suffering of the victims. With the prevailing situation of reports of child abuse and bonded labour emerging time and again, we are far from addressing the issue in its entirety, let alone solving it.

When the case of 10-year-old Tayyaba had surfaced back in 2017, a ray of hope kindled for all the victims through which the darkness of this mindset was expected to be extinguished. But emergence of yet another incident a few days back in Faisalabad in which seven-year-old Maria was recovered by local police from a road side with torture marks all over her body gives us the reality check that nothing has changed and will not change any time soon.

The type of abuse these children suffer at the hands of their hirers is simply baffling. A medico-legal examination of the latest reported victim Maria revealed several injuries on her entire body, including broken fingers that were later let to be wrongly joined.

Tayyaba’s agony was no different as her small hands were shoved onto a burning stove by her masters when they were found to be too small to be able to take care of a toddler — a job for which she was hired.

Besides, many video clips keep circulating on social media day after day showing how child maids are being mistreated by their ‘madams’ for putting too much salt in food or drinking water from the same vessel as theirs.

If their crimes are too grave and prodigious to be forgiven and ignored, the accused should be asked since when has hiring minor girls as maids become lawful? Are their hands big enough to look after toddlers like mothers, cook like professional chefs, or clean like grown-up sweepers? Are they not kids themselves? When one cannot expect one’s own seven-year-old child to be efficient in work done by adults, how can one punish other’s children for failing to do the same? Just because they have been hired and because their parents are being paid for their ‘services’? Is Rs15,000-20,000 a weighty amount for which parents get their children employed through agents and turn blind eye to their miseries and sufferings? Can any amount of money justify such brutality?

Why observing a single day to serve this cause is not enough could be seen in the complexity of breaking the snowball effect. Crackdown against recruiting agents; punishing employers; offering financial incentives to parents; and enrolling children to schools, a multi-facet approach needs to be applied to permanently declaw this problem from Pakistan’s social fabric. Otherwise, our future will continue to be pushed towards darkness of illiteracy and barbarity and a time will come when we won’t be able to help these children in any way.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2019.

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