PESHAWAR, Oct 1: Speakers at a seminar have voiced concern over paltry wages awarded to labourers and asked the government to implement the International Labour Organization (ILO) rules that call for appropriate wages for them.

Organized by Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc) on Tuesday in Mingora, the seminar was attended by many people.

A speaker Shaukat Saleem advocate said: “There are about 4.7 million people who are being exploited by their employers in the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (Pata), which was in clear violation of the International Labour Organization Convention No.182.”

He said condition was worsening day by day in Malakand Division because of non-extension of anti-child labour laws to the area.

Children are being exploited for meagre amount like Rs20-30 per day. They work in brick kilns, cosmetic industry, hotels and are also being used for smuggling and drug trafficking in Pata, he said.

Arshad Mahmood of Sparc said that over 250 million children were economically active around the globe while in Pakistan according to official statistics the number of child labourers was around 3.3 million.

But according to a Unicef survey, an estimated 8 million children were economically active in Pakistan, he said.

Elaborating different forms of child labour under the ILO Convention No.182, he said that in a consultative process, the government, International Labour Organization, NGOs, employers’ organizations and labour leaders had identified 29 hazardous forms of child labour in Pakistan.

There is a need to notify these occupations in the Employment of Children Act 1991 schedule, he said, regretting that these laws and convention were of no use for children in Swat as no child labour laws had been extended to Swat.

Shujaul Mulk, deputy director labour, said there were so many confusions in the child labour laws of the country— the Employment of Children Act 1991, Road Transport Workers Ordinance 1961, and Factories Act. All these laws set the child’s age for employment differently and the ILO convention set it at 18.

He said 37 prosecutions under the labour laws were in different courts, but without any result as non-extension of labour laws to Pata coupled with absence of labour courts and confusion over the age limit for children prescribed in different laws were major problems in the way of having a check on the child labour in Pata.

According to the Minimum Wages Act, the minimum wage for a labourer was Rs2,500, but in Swat even adult employees of different factories were being paid only Rs1,000-1,500 per month, he said.