LAHORE: Child rights activists in a conference at the press club on Thursday discussed the importance of a law against child labour.

June 12 is the World Day against Child Labour, and the activists said despite the fact that children were employed in many places from homes to factories, they were bereft of their right to education and extra-curricular activities, and in fact a right to childhood.

Iftikhar Mubarik from Plan Pakistan introduced the issue saying that one of the basic demands was to make an effective system, with laws, policies and strategies in which children from all backgrounds were safe and protected. With special regard to household work, he said last year around 25 children were killed as a result of abuse by employers. This, he said, were the reported cases. Apart from this, children were often victims of emotional, sexual and physical abuse.

He said although the Punjab chief minister took notice of individual cases, no law was present at any level which could help keep children safe.

He said according to Article 32 the State had to take initiative to protect children. There was no clear strategy and although the Labour and Human Resource Department was working on the Bill of Employment of Children, there was no mention of domestic employment.

Sajjad Cheema from SPARC said the bill had been enacted since 2002 but not much could be seen concerning it being passed from the assembly.

He said the 1991 Act of Children’s Employment existed but there was no implementation. Besides that it only explained what kind of work the children could do and how many hours of work they could do.

In other words, 34 occupations were said to be hazardous for children under the age of 14 years. For non-hazardous occupations, any child from the age of four years and up could be working without any regulation or monitoring.

Umme Laila from Homenet Pakistan said among the 3.3 million children who were under 14 years of age, 27 per cent were girls and 73pc boys.

She said in the South Asia Labour Conference they had suggested that labour issues of women and children along with forced labour be considered separately so that they could be tackled better.

Irfan Mufti from SAP Pakistan said society was always unsafe for women and “now it is unsafe for children too.”

The activists demanded that the government show its will through legislation, and when the government wants to ban something such as pillion riding or late weddings, it ensures that the law is implemented. Salman Abid of SPO said the government unfortunately did not prioritise social issues. “We can see how much was allocated in the budget for social issues,” Abid said.

“The 1991 Act only regulates children’s employment, it does not ban them from working,” said Iftikhar Mubarik.

On a separate occasion, a door-to-door campaign was initiated by NGO Godh. A seminar was conducted where the participants presented a resolution, calling for declaring domestic child labour a prohibited profession.

Activists and volunteers of Godh conducted a door-to-door visit to 100 houses and gave awareness, distributed pamphlets and pasted stickers stating that the particular house was free of child labour. They found that eight of the houses had child labour while 92 of them were child labour free.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2014