March 26, 2007	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 6, 1428

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MUZAFFARGARH, March 25: Twelve-year-old Ishfaq wants to go to school and become a respectable citizen but he feels that his schooling will add miseries to his parents who are already facing hardships to feed the family.

“My father tells me that I am old enough to share his burden in raising the family. So he dropped me at the Hashir Textile Mills four months ago. Here, I work for non-stop eight hours everyday,” says Ishfaq, sitting by his hostel.

Thoughts of helping his family makes Ishfaq proud. “I give Rs3,000 to my father which are enough to make ends meet,” he says. He keeps Rs500 for his own expenditure.

Two other boys, Nazir, 13, and Imran, 12, are his colleagues and they joined the mills for the same reason at this tender age.

Imran, Ishfaq and Nazir are from a Bhakkar village and work for the textile mills on Jhang Road in Muzaffargarh. The three boys are not alone in doing labour for the sake of their families as dozens of underage labourers are working in many Muzaffargarh textile, jute and cotton mills.

They say that despite their full commitment to their job, they have never been given respect and rights by mills administrations and adult colleagues.

Talking to Dawn, they said they were living in a hostel in the boundary of the mills with other adult labourers.

The condition of their hostel is pathetic and heaps of garages are lying there. For these underage labourers, the stench of garbage is not as pinching as the behaviour of their colleagues.

“We lock our room from the inside before going to bed because we know that many labourers are sodomites,” Imran said.

He said there was no industry in Bhakkar district so he had to come to Muzaffargarh for work. He said since he was underage, mill had not given him any employment letter. He said he had never been given his salary on time.

“Sometimes they (mills administration) give us salary in the first week of the month and sometimes in the third week,” he said.

He said many a time his father came to get money from him but went back Empty-handed because mills delayed his salary. Ishfaq said that mills officials got their signature on a blank paper and sometimes detected money from their salaries on various pretexts.

Underage workers are not given any break during their eight hours working.

“We are not allowed to sit anywhere or go to washroom more than three times,” Ishfaq said.

“If we are caught sitting somewhere, the supervisor thrashes us and sometimes imposes fine on us,” Imran said. He said his job was to collect yarn from different units in the mills.

The boys said the mills did not provide any health facility to labourers and if some one fell ill, he had to go to the Social Security Hospital for treatment.

The Dawn correspondent sneaked into Apollo Textile Mills on Alipur Road and saw 12-year-old Ijaz handling a full unit.

He left his school after passing class three because of poverty and joined the mills.

“When my father dropped me here on my first day, the in-charge of the unit told my father that he had taken a wise decision,” Ijaz says.

“My in-charge assured my father that he will make me an expert and I will earn a lot of money.”

He said that my in-charge said that those who studied at schools had wasted their time. Once Ijaz started working at the mills, there is no looking back.

Many underage labourers are serving at the Medina Jute Mills and other mills as well.

When contacted for comments, Apollo Mills labour officer Siddique denied the recruitment of any underage labourer at the mills. Over this, the Dawn correspondent showed him few boys carrying sacks on their backs passed by his office. Then, he admitted that they had hired many boys in some departments of the mills. He said that no textile mills could work without child labourers. He said child labour was cheap and efficient.

Altaf Fareed of the Hashir Textile Mills first denied the presence of underage labourers in the mills but admitted later the fact and said that since he had joined the mills recently, he did not know much about the mills affairs.

Muhammad Hassan of the Medina Jute Mills said that local union council nazims and councillors forced them to recruit underage labourers. He said his staff had never discriminated against underage labourers.

Executive District Officer (Community Development) Malik Khair Muhammad Budh said that he would activate the District Child Commission to discourage child labour in the district. He said that apart from the corporate sector, many child workers were working in hotels, workshops, farms, mills and offices. He said some children opted employment because of poverty and some were forced to labour. He said that he would take strict action if he received any complaint about child labour. He said that mostly labourers came to him with complaints about delayed salaries but he never received any complaint from any underage labourer. He said non-government organisations and social workers should work against child labour.