Killing our children

There is an epidemic across the land that rarely makes the headlines — the killing and torture of children who are employed in domestic service. The majority of those who die and are abused meet their miserable fates in houses located in upscale neighbourhoods, and they die at the hands of people such as professors of English literature, past presidents of bar associations and other so-called ‘upper class’ persons. It is the moneyed classes that can afford to pay the miserly wages given to child domestic workers, and it is poor families whose poverty drives them to allow their children to be employed in domestic service. There are around 3.3 million children under 14 who work as domestic labour, with 73 per cent boys and 27 per cent girls, according to figures compiled and released by the National Child Labour Survey. Between January 2010 and December 2013, there were 52 reported cases of child domestic workers being tortured by their employers — almost certainly an under-reporting — and 24 of those tortured died of their injuries. In 2013 alone, there were 21 cases and eight deaths. Nobody is expecting any improvement in these figures in the foreseeable future. Prosecutions are rare.

Quite apart from the absence of any moral values on the part of the killers, the state fails to protect child domestic workers with appropriate legislation. The police are on record having said that cases are invariably ‘settled’ — blood money paid — before they get as far as an FIR registration. The culture of impunity that prevails in the upper strata of society means that even where legislation is proposed as it is in Punjab, it is being stalled by powerful vested interests that have no desire to see their brutality exposed or limited. There is legislation to cover the industrial employment of children, but none to cover ordinary households. Industrial protective legislation is rarely invoked, either. It is time steps were taken to change this and not only should legislation be passed in this regard, but its enforcement should also be ensured.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 19^th, 2014.

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