ISLAMABAD, Sept 6: The country needs special legislation to curb ever-increasing domestic child labour.

This was a consensus reached among the speakers on the first day of the two-day conference on ‘The State of Child Domestic Workers in Pakistan’, here on Saturday.

The conference has been organized by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc).

They were also of the view that children of today were the hope and future of the country, and neither community nor the government could afford to ignore their responsibility for the better future of children.

“If we fail, it means a bleak future is waiting for us,” they unanimously agreed at the end of first day’s deliberations.

Speaking on the occasion, the secretary, Pakistan Law and Justice Commission, Dr Faqir Hussain, said though the government had taken up the issue of industrial child labour, it had not treated domestic child labour as a separate subject.

Therefore, over the years, domestic labour had remained neglected and as a result the problem had increase manifold. He was of the view that there was a need to distinguish between service and labour.

When service begins to affect education, health and life of a child then it becomes labour, he said, adding, when there was a law, it became a legally enforceable instrument and therefore helped to support the issue.

Sparc national director Anees Jillani said there was little official documentation, hence little was known about the real extent and magnitude of child labour in the country.

Similarly, he said the plight of child domestic workers was a neglected subject in Pakistan mainly because they were invisible. He also argued that potential for exploitation might be worse for children working at homes because there were no regulations or laws to monitor their working hours, pay structures and environment, especially if she was a girl.

He also informed the participants that at present 90 per cent girls were working as domestic child labourers.

According to another speaker, Ms Manizeh there were 30 million children between the ages of five to 15, out of which 23 million were available for child labour.

She further added that officially 3.3 million children were working as child labourers in the country, whereas the unofficial number was about eight million.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Kaiser Bengali of Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) said child labour was a product of supply and demand, but domestic child labour was only consumption because it was not a productive activity.

Being critical of the government, he said poverty was due to the policies followed by the government, and domestic child labour was a result of an unjust society where rich and poor lived in separate worlds.

“And, unless there is fair distribution of assets poverty will not be eradicated,” Dr Bengali said.

Zakir Hussain, representing the labour ministry, said the government had allocated Rs100 million for rehabilitation of bonded labour, especially in the carpet industry.

He said under the scheme parents were given incentive to send their children to school and develop other skills. He said the labour ministry had conducted about 11 studies and was talking to the NGOs and other stakeholders to create awareness on child labour.

Ms Samina of Working Women Association said girl domestic workers had to face a number of untold miseries.

“We need to work at all levels — organizational, governmental, as well as individual — to help such children get out of the vicious circle of labour and poverty,” she said.