A child has the right to education and cannot be made to work in any manner.
LAHORE: This is apropos of Sehar Mughal’s report of July 24 titled “Hazardous work: Thousands of children making surgical goods”.
Children are being abused in Pakistan on one pretext or another. Many factory owners justify employing children on the ground that they learn a trade and at the same time earn a living for themselves and their families. This is a bad excuse and the employers are simply fooling themselves as well as others. The main idea behind this distressing practice is that it reduces the cost of production since children are not paid as high wages as adults (and the latter, in any case, are not paid very well either). Also, child labourers are probably easier to control than adults and would be more likely to spend long hours in poor working conditions without complaining or making a ruckus. And in case of any accident, there would be no question of giving them any compensation against injury or disability.
There are certain trades which seem to have been earmarked for child labour in this country, and these include carpet weaving, sports goods and surgical instruments, embroidery work in cloth shops and working as chhotas in car repair shops, etc. Children make the cheapest and the weakest workforce and are most susceptible to abuse. Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 and is, therefore, bound to protect children from economic exploitation. To put children to work for money would also be immoral. Working children are not healthy children and nor are they happy. As a matter of fact, they are deprived of the joys of childhood. They have no time to play or to cheerfully spend it with their siblings. They are a wretched lot.
A child has the right to education and cannot be made to work in any manner. Pakistan is lagging behind in literacy in any case and needs to come down hard on child labour. If we do not wake up now, we shall be doomed.
S Abrar Hussain
Published in The Express Tribune, July 29th, 2013.
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