Child Labor in Pakistan

Children are like flowers, they require love care, attention and the right conditions into which to grow, they need to get strong and make their roots deep and firm, and they need the right conditions to bloom when the time comes. In the morning some children go to schools while others go to work killing their aspirations, dreams and other wishes, no mother wants to send their child to work; will they not be willing to send their child to some school for better future? As they have no other way as their family face bundle of problems. These children play a key role in sustaining the economically life of their family without which, their families would not be able to make ends meet. The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines child Labor as a child working during early age and overworks or gives over time to Labor due to the psychologically, socially, and materialistic pressure and he also easily becomes ready to Labor on a very low pay.
According to the UNICEF “child” is defined as anyone bellow the age of 18, and when they do some type of work that harms them or exploits them in some way(physically, mentally, morally or blocking access to education) when they are bellow the age of 18 is called as “child labor”.
Coming toward Pakistan we see from the population survey that there are above 40 million children from the age group of 5 to 15 in which 3.8 million are affected by child labor. Now let me show you what these innocent children do which we call it labor work.
• Work inside underground mines, including blasting and assisting in blasting
• Work with power driven cutting machinery like saws, shears, and guillotines, ( Thrashers, fodder cutting machines, also marbles)
• Work with live electrical wires over 50V.
• Operation related to leather tanning process e.g. soaking, dehairing, liming chrome tanning, deliming, pickling defleshing, and ink application.
• Mixing or application or pesticides insecticide/fumigation.
• Sandblasting and other work involving exposure to free silica.
• Work with exposure to all toxic, explosive and carcinogenic chemicals
• Work with exposure to cement dust (cement industry)
• Work with exposure to coal dust
• Manufacture and sale of fireworks explosives
• Work at the sites where Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) are filled in cylinders.
• Work on glass and metal furnaces
• Work in the clothe printing, dyeing and finishing sections
• Work inside sewer pipelines, pits, storage tanks
• Stone crushing
• Lifting and carrying of heavy weight specially in transport industry ( 15b kg and above)
• Work between 10 pm to 8 am ( Hotel Industry)
• Carpet waving
• Working 2 meter above the floor
• Scavenging work including hospital waste
• tobacco process ( including Niswar) and Manufacturing
• Commercial fishing/ sea food and fish processing
• Sheep casing and wool industry
• Surgical instrument manufacturing specially in vendors workshop
After seeing this questions arises in our minds
What are these children learning?
What is there future?
Is this is what they have thought for?
Is there is no one for their help?
Now let us see what have given growth to child labor
• Poverty (Income of 65.5% people of Pakistan is below 2 U.S. dollars a day and 47 million people in Pakistan are leading lines below the line of poverty)
• Lack of opportunities
• High rate of population growth
• Unemployment
• Uneven distribution of wealth and resources
• Outdated social customs and norms
As we all know that today children are the future of our country so as an individual and group we should overcome the increase in child labor and especially government should put restriction on child labor and on the other hand give opportunity to their families to earn income.
Christopher Reeve says that once you choose hope, anything's possible.