ISLAMABAD, March 18: The government has launched a project to eliminate child labour in carpet industry, the National Assembly was told on Thursday. In a written statement, it was stated that under the programme launched in collaboration with the ILO
, non-formal education centres had been set up for imparting education to these children.
Currently more than 9,000 such children are receiving free educational and recreational facilities in these centres. The Child Care Foundation is also running similar centres in Lahore, Sheikhupura, Attock and Karachi where over 7,000 working children are receiving free education and vocational training.
According to a national child labour survey carried out by the Federal Bureau of Statistics in 1996, total child labourers in the country was estimated to be 3.3 million. Of this, 67 per cent were in the agriculture sector and 10.74 per cent in manufacturing sector.
The carpet sector is covered under manufacturing (sub-sector) textile, and it is far from fact that half million to one million children worked as bonded labourers in this sector, the house was informed.
To another question, Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari in a written statement admitted that no city in Pakistan had achieved the level of fame similar to that of Bangalore, where companies had become famous during the last ten years and were selling software to US.
Similarly, South Korea is known more for the export of IT related hardware though its software industry has also grown over the last few years.
