LAHORE: Some 40 children were rescued from two brick kilns in Batapur on Saturday and taken to nearby schools for enrollment.

The crackdown on child labour was launched under the “The Punjab Prohibition of Child Lahour at Brick Kiln Ordinance 2016” promulgated by the provincial government.

The ordinance prohibits employment of a worker less than 14 years of age.

The government has constituted a district level committee to inspect kilns in their respective areas.

The Lahore committee was headed by District Coordination Officer Muhammad Usman and its members are Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Amin Wains and Labour department district head.

On Saturday, the DCO, CCPO, Shalimar assistant commissioner along with security officials conducted a surprise raid on two kilns at Nathoki in Batapur area and recovered some 40 children.

Police sealed both the kilns and arrested the owner and his helper after registering a case.

The DCO talking to the media said the committees were conducting raids on kilns on a daily basis to end child labour.

He said the district teams were rescuing children from kilns, enrolling them in schools and also providing books.

He said initially they were being given a monthly stipend of Rs1,000 and Rs2,000 to their parents to ensure their attendance in schools.

He said the teams were directed to conduct raids on kilns in school time and keep a check that the children were being sent to schools or not.

The DCO directed the assistant commissioners to collect data of kilns and during checking stern legal action would be taken against the owners and parents for employing children.

He also directed the patrolling and area police to keep an eye on the kilns violating child labour laws while adding the network administrators were directed to locate the kilns of Lahore on Google map.

The DCO and CCPO also visited the Home Economics College, Gulberg, where the principal briefed them about the security.

DIG (Operations) Dr Haider Ashraf said police recovered some 96 children from kilns in a week-long crackdown in three division including Cantonment, Saddar and Iqbal Town.

He said some 33 kiln owners and accountants were arrested and 26 cases registered against them for violating child labour ordinance.

He said according to the ordinance, employing a 14-year-old child in any working place would land the owner in jail for six months or Rs500,000 fine.

Meanwhile, the chief minister said the educational package would change the life of the children working at kilns.

He was addressing a review meeting for the elimination of child labour from kilns held at Civil Secretariat through a video link.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2016