Agriculture sector thrives on child labour

Where most school-going adolescents in urban areas spend a large portion of their day advancing their intellectual development and polishing their interpersonal skills, those belonging to agricultural families experience the mundane exhaustion of work-life way too early.

Despite the Punjab Restriction on Employment of Children Act of 2016, criminalizing the employment of a child below the age of 15, the vice is a common practice in the agriculture sector, which thrives on the blood and sweat of millions of minors, who suffer severe impediments in their physiological, psychological, intellectual and social development.

Muhammad Ibraham, a 12-year-old boy from the Awan Dhaiwala area of Lahore, was spotted collecting potatoes in the fields.

“I used to go to school but was withdrawn by my parents in fourth grade because they wanted me to contribute towards the family income,” deplored Muhammad Ibrahim, who earns barely Rs12,000 per month for picking potatoes, planting paddy, and transporting cattle to the fields.

Surrounding Ibrahim were several other children, some of whom appeared as young as seven years of age, who were dutifully assisting their mother or father with their daily farm work.

According to a report published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) for the year 2021- 22, 56 per cent of 14 million child laborers under the age of ten, are employed in the agricultural sector, which has the highest ratio of child laborers, 26 per cent to be specific, concentrated in the core province of Punjab.

“Child labor is a big problem plaguing the agricultural sector in Punjab since a lack of awareness among parents on the importance of formal schooling forces many to engage their children in paid employment from a young age.

This has long lasting repercussions for the innocent children, who are deprived of formal schooling, good health, and cognitive development and are robbed of their hopes for a better future,” asserted Amir Hayat Bhandara, who felt that worsening poverty alongside weak labor laws allowed the vice to continue unabated.

Concurring with Bhandara, Iftikhar Mubarak, head at a nongovernmental organization (NGO) working on children’s rights felt that child labor had assumed the status of an ineradicable vice due to the deepening economic crisis in the country.

“Since people living in the villages usually have no alternative means of earning a livelihood, they see their children as a source of income, therefore they show no hesitation in involving them in dangerous jobs like spraying pesticides on crops, driving tractors, using thresher machines, watering fields in the dark, and carrying heavy goods, “opined Mubarak, who further requested the government to help create alternative employment opportunities for agricultural families so that they have no excuse left for involving their children in such risky activities.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Muhammad Shahid, Deputy Director and Law Officer at the Punjab Labor Department said, “Child labor has not yet been brought into any legal framework in the field of agriculture, but work is underway, in consultation with all stakeholders, to formulate the necessary rules.”

On the other hand, Rao Zahid Mehmood, the focal person of the Labor Department, told The Express Tribune that, “No laws have been made specifically for the general farming sector in the country and the laws regarding commercial farming are extended to cover violations like child labor in the other sectors.”