KARACHI: Civil society and labour representatives held a joint press conference on the issue of child labour in Pakistan at the Karachi Press Club on Friday.

Speaking about the unfortunate case of a child maid, who was reportedly beaten, burned and locked up in a store in the home of a sessions judge in Islamabad, secretary of the National Labour Council Karamat Ali said that it concerned them that no one seemed to know the girl’s whereabouts, and that now her father had also disappeared.

About the sessions judge’s wife, who had allegedly beaten the girl, he said that it was surprising that she got out on bail.

“When a country makes a law, it should also make sure that it is followed by the protectors of the law,” he said.

He said it was sad that poor parents made their children work to supplement their income when, according to Article 25-A of the Constitution, all children 16 and under should be in school.

He also quoted from the Employment of Children Act 1991 that it was against the law to make children aged 14 and under do manual labour.

“There is also the National Plan of Action for Elimination of Child Labour, which is not being followed. The government had come up with a policy to combat child labour when child labour in Pakistan became an international issue. Big orders from abroad to any manufacturer here used to get cancelled if it was discovered that they hired children,” said Karamat Ali, adding that the policy also included plans to bring out-of-school children back to school, support poor families so that they don’t force their children to work, and also create a social security system.

Other things that were part of the plan were apprenticeship programmes and vocational training. “And all these things were time-bound,” said Karamat Ali. “The targets were to be met by 2005, but today in 2017 we have 25 million children who are out of school. The figure is four times what it was in 2000,” he said.

“We seem to have this national hobby to plan and come up with such programmes, which are not implemented,” he said. “We have nine million children [involved] in child labour. The National Plan of Action for Elimination of Child Labour is still valid today,” he said.

“We urge Justice Mian Saqib Nisar and Justice Maqbool Baqar to not just take the girl servant’s case as an isolated incident because this is happening everywhere. Children are being treated as slaves. Please end this slavery. Please punish the guilty,” he said.

Convener of the Sindh Labour Solidarity Committee Habibullah Junaidi said that the girl’s case was not the first of its kind. “And, sadly, it won’t be the last either,” he said. “Child labour is related to poverty. Therefore, we need to work to eradicate poverty,” he added.

Mir Zulfiqar Ali of the Workers Education and Research Organisation questioned why all the laws were just for the poor and not for the affluent.

Shafiq Ghori and Farhat Parveen also spoke.

Published in Dawn, January 7th, 2017