KARACHI: Funds urged to improve condition of children
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, June 15: Speakers at a conference held here on Thursday demanded allocation of more funds for children so that they could be provided with better education, health and other facilities.
They were expressing their views on the first day of the two-day national conference on ‘Children in Difficult Circumstances in Sindh’ which has been organised by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child.They called for enacting local laws in conformity with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which Pakistan is a signatory.
Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, a former Supreme Court judge, said that owing to the faulty police investigation system, the conviction rate in the country remained between 5 and 10 per cent only, as compared to over 90 per cent in Britain. Besides, he added, most jail inmates appeared to be so poor to afford expenses of litigation process.
He noted that the superior judiciary provided relief to people, but the lower judiciary needed to be improved and strengthened as a majority of people would approach the civil and district level courts.
He said that probation officers, under the Probation Ordinance 1960, should be appointed at the district level so that women prisoners could benefit from the legal system. This facility, he added, should be extended to juvenile prisoners also by amending the law.
Chief of the host Society Javed Jabbar noted that Pakistan had been in the forefront when the 1990 UN summit, which passed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, was held and when Juvenile Justice Ordinance had been promulgated in the country. However, he regretted, the situation of the child’s right in Pakistan had not improved yet.
Other speakers said that a large number of schools in Sindh, particularly those in rural areas, were lying closed. They stressed on making efforts to make them functional so that children could be provided education.
They also demanded separate accommodation for female juvenile prisoners in jails so that they were not abused by other women inmates with whom they were being kept. They noted that there were more than 700 juvenile prisoners – both male and female – languishing in 17 jails in Sindh.
They observed that after much effort put in by civil society organizations, the government had made a few policies to improve the condition of children. Even these policies were not being implemented properly, they regretted, saying that the apathy had prevented any change in the condition of the child. They also indicated that while the social sector budget was already very small, a portion of it always lapsed as unutilised.
The speakers said that although the child labour had been disallowed under the constitution, the menace not only continued to exist but was on the rise owing to poverty.
Anita Ghulamali, a former Sindh education minister, Karamat Ali of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, Zia Ahmed Awan of the Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid, Qandeel Shujaat, Ghulam Siddique, Rana Asif and Gul M. Mastoi were among those who spoke at the conference.
