June 12, 2003	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 11, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, June 11: A function in connection with the World Day Against Child Labour will be held at the local ILO office at 5pm on Thursday.

Federal Minister for Labour Abdul Sattar Laleka will be the chief guest. The Day was celebrated for the first time last year.

According to the ILO, child trafficking has been one of the worst forms of child labour. An estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked each year for exploitative work in agriculture, mining, factories, armed conflicts or commercial sex.

Our Reporter adds: Child labour is stealing the childhood of millions of children, denying them their right to education, recreation and leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

A press release issued by Sparc on the occasion said many working children are young girls toiling as domestic servants, unpaid in their own homes or paid a pittance in others’ houses as prostitutes or cheap labourers in cottage industries.

These children are an invisible workforce in invisible workplaces with special needs demanding particular attention to ensure their rights to education and protection from exploitation.

It has been a tradition with the well-off families to take in a poor neighbour‘s child and ensure his or her education while the child becomes a helping hand to the household.

However, the practice has lost its welfare motivation and the children are employed as cheap, easily-manipulated household labourers without being provided education, better nutrition, medical attention, time for recreation or any other benefits. Some are not even paid.

Instead, child servants are routinely physically beaten, tortured and brutalized, some even to the point of death. Many are cut off from their families. Both girls and boys are vulnerable to sexual exploitation while employed as domestic servants.

Children working in other sectors are no better off, and face the same vulnerability, exploitation and abuse.