LAHORE, Nov 20: Over 70,000 minor girls are forced into child labour in kilns throughout the Punjab according to a report of the social welfare department.

This was stated by Society for the Protection of Rights of Children provincial coordinator Muhammad Jalil at a news conference at the Lahore Press Club on Thursday. The conference was arranged to mark the Universal Children’s Day.

He said 60,000 children were forced into child labour in the most hazardous professions like tanneries, scavenging, surgical instruments, glass bangle, coal mining and fishing.

According to unofficial statistics, he said, more than 100 million children could not go to schools because of poverty and other reasons. Most of them earned their livelihood from car and shoe polishing, begging, working at hotels, workshops and factories, he said.

However, the children could not be forced into labour in 20 professions, including work with power-driven cutting machinery like saws, shears and guillotines.

All operations related to leather tanning process, mixing or application, sandblasting and other works involving exposure to free silica, toxic and chemicals, and cement and dust industry.

Nazir Ghazi, a representative of NGO Godh, said the children should be protected from economic exploitation under the UN Convention on the Rights of Child. The laws also protected them from performing any hazardous work, he said, regretting that the government was not taking enough measures to implement the child rights’ laws.

Another NGO CACL’s coordinator, Muhammad Safdar, said the government had failed to check child labour. He said under the ILO Convention 138 of 1973, “the minimum age for employment may not be set lower than the age of completion of compulsory schooling and in any case not less than 15 years.”

It is pertinent to mention that under the ILO’s Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention 182 of 1999 (also ratified by Pakistan), all forms of slavery or practice similar to slavery such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced recruitment of children for use in the armed conflict are banned.

It has also banned the offering of a child for prostitution, production of pornography and illicit activities like drug trafficking.

“But the law has not been implemented due to the government’s lack of interest,” said the representatives of the NGOs. According to data available with the labour department, over 40 million children, aged between five and 14, are forced into child labour in Pakistan. Of them, 22.6 million are in the Punjab, 8.6 million in Sindh, 2 million in Balochistan and 6.7 million in the NWFP.

The NGOs also urged the government to implement laws against punishment of children in schools and domestic violence against them.

WALK: A walk was organized by the Bazm-i-Paigham Lahore from the Multan Road to the Canal View in connection with the Universal Children’s Day.