Working hard, dreaming big: Poverty pushes children from school straight into unforgiving labour

Education takes a back step as cycle of poverty continues relentlessly

PESHAWAR: In a place where ever-increasing prices bring crippling poverty, children are pushed into the workforce even before they can hope to dream big. Yet some of them manage to hold firm to their visions of breaking the cycle.

Unfortunately, the jobs children do find to support their families bring little money and plenty of health hazards. Zaryaab and Salman are two such children who have become labourers at an age when their hands should be holding books instead of wrenches and ratchets.

Sixteen-year-old Zaryaab is a mechanic who has been working since two years.



He says he has become an expert in mending vehicles and can fix faults in motorbikes within minutes. Although these children have been subjected to this life at such a young age, their dreams are big and keep them motivated.

Zaryaab wishes to open his own workshop one day. He says his dream has become his motivation and hence he works with commitment to make it come to life. In clothes tainted with stains of labour, the boy says it is hard work that will lead him to his destiny since “one doesn’t get success all plated up”.

At this age, the boy has realised how difficult it is to earn money. “After working for a whole week, I earn Rs550,” he says. “Every day I come to the workshop at 8 in the morning and work till 7 in the evening.”

He runs his household along with his father who is a driver; they live in a house for which they pay Rs3,000 rent per month.

Zaryaab’s story is similar to 15-year-old Salman’s who inflates tyres and has been doing so for four years. “I wish to go to school but cannot since my father wanted me to share his financial burden,” says the boy. “I make Rs150 in a day and wish to buy my own bike – some day.”

Out of school

The provincial government launched enrolment campaigns and called an ‘education emergency’, but there are still 0.4 million children in the province out of school at the primary level, says the 2013-14 report by Pakistan Education Statistics released last month.

A report compiled by Alif Ailaan suggests the same scenario; around 0.18 million children between the ages of five to 16 are out of school in Peshawar. The report adds 41% of the out of school children belong to low-income backgrounds. Such a high number of drop outs offer an insight into one of the main barriers to education that continues to persist – financial constraints.

Legal support

A ray of hope was seen after the K-P Assembly passed a bill to tackle the menace of child labour.

The Prohibition of Employment of Children Bill 2015 says no adolescent should be required or permitted to work in excess of the number of hours prescribed. The bill adds they should work for not more than three hours a day and that too with an hour’s break. However, the bill has yet to be made a law.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2015.