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| October 16, 2005 | Sunday | Ramzan 11, 1426 |
Camel jockeys: lest their dreams die young
RAHIM YAR KHAN, Oct 15: Scores of local families, which have virtually sacrificed their children to the altar of death by sending them to the UAE as camel jockeys to earn some bucks, have narrated their ordeal.
Remorseful and worried, they complain that they are not given the money promised by different agents. Some of the parents are still hoping to see their loved ones alive.
In May 2005, Unicef and the UAE government had signed an agreement to help return and rehabilitation of the under-age camel racers to their homes. However, the situation is getting worse by the day, not to speak of any let in the business.
According to sources, not less than 2,800 of the 3,000 children currently involved in camel racing are under 10. Some 2,000, they say, belong to Pakistan alone (most of them from Rahim Yar Khan district).
A survey conducted by Dawn revealed that most of the families which had preferred to improve their lot by dispatching their children for camel sport were not better off.
Labourer Ghulam Nabi, a resident of Kharasan Colony in Liquatpur, sent his two sons — Qurban Ali, 6, and Irfan Ali, 5, seven years ago as child jockeys. He said an agent, Khair Muhammad Sindhi, came to his village and asked the people to send their children to the UAE for the better future of the families.
“As some people invited him to dinner, he asked me to give him Rs50,000 to send my two children to UAE and promised that in return I would be paid 700 dirhams a month. Fed up with poverty, I decided to hand over my two children to Khair Muhammad and for their fare sold my goats and wife’s jewellery”.
The labourer said the agent took him along with the two children to Karachi where he, together with a Sindhi woman, arranged Iranian visas for all of them.
Staying in Iran for a month, he said, the agent sent me to Dubai and kept the children with him. “In Dubai, the airport authorities arrested me and deported me to Karachi on the charge of travelling on a fake visa.”
Alarmed by the situation, he said, he complained to the Governor’s House and thereafter police raided Khair Muhammad’s house in Landhi and recovered many passports and pictures of children. He said a case was registered against the suspect.
He said the agent kept his children in Iran for two months and then took them to Dubai by sea. After three years, the Pakistani government arranged his visa for Dubai to help him bring his children but an Arab who was looking after his children refused to allow their return after which he returned home alone.
Ever since, he complained, he had not received any money and all the amount was being given to Khair Muhammad. In 2005 when the government-level initiative was taken to return the children, he said, the same Arab paid him 5,000 dirhams.
The labourer said though his children had finally returned, he now realized that he wasted money and seven precious years of his children’s lives to get her paralyzed wife treated. He said now his children were studying in class 1.
He said eight families in the colony had sent their children to the UAE.
Yet another victim is Zulfiqar, son of Nazir Ahmad, who hail from Bhatta Sheikhan in a Khanpur village. Nazir, a labourer who has five children, sent his son Zulfiqar to UAE seven years ago when he was only six.
Nazir told Dawn that he took the decision to send Zulfiqar abroad when a relative, Naseem, came to his house and convinced his wife that “if you will send your child abroad you will become rich.” He also quoted Naseem as saying that she would bear expenses of his son to send him to UAE and in return they would be paid 500 dirhams every month.
Subsequently, he said, Naseem sent his son through agent Ramzan Mohana. Several other children of the village were sent to the UAE through the same agent. Nazir said Naseem gave them Rs4,000 every year for the first three years and then did not contact them.
He said during all these years his son was also taken to Qattar for camel races where he met with a serious accident. Nazir told this correspondent that now his son had been brought to Lahore, but he could not bring him home because the Khanpur TMA officer was not providing him Zulfiqar’s birth certificate.
Also victimized by an agent was Ghulam Nabi, a resident of Chak No 93/P in Rahim Yar Khan tehsil, who sent his four-year-old son Majid Husain to the UAE. He said the agent did not send him even a penny all through these years. He said he had made the blunder of his life and his son was still living a life of servitude.
Tracing its history, the practice of sending children as camel jockeys started in the early 1980’s when some Pakistanis employed in the UAE started taking their children to the desert. With the passage of time, it became a flourishing business and agents were involved.
Camel racing is a popular sport in the Gulf states, including the UAE, for which boys between 4 and 10 have been trafficked from Pakistan and other South Asian countries. Parents are usually promised that their children will be employed as companions for children of wealthy families and will take part in ceremonial events.
In 1993, the UAE government prohibited employment of children as camel jockeys and the use of jockey weighing less than 45kgs. However, this was not to be.
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