PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Thursday expressed dissatisfaction with the provincial government’s steps against child labour and asked it to take concrete measures to address the menace.

Justice Qaiser Rasheed and Justice Ijaz Anwer ordered the government to take immediate steps for improving the situation on the matter until Nov 14 and ruled if that didn’t happen, the court would summon the relevant minister and provincial chief secretary to explain position in that respect.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by former deputy attorney general for Pakistan Mohammad Khursheed Khan, who challenged child labour seeking orders for the government to end the involvement of children as labourer.

It also expressed astonishment at a report submitted by the KP Child Protection and Welfare Commission, which claimed that beggary by children had ended in Peshawar and some other cities.

Expresses surprise at report, which claims end to child beggary in Peshawar, some other cities

Justice Qaiser Rasheed observed that minor children could be seen begging and seeking alms outside the nearby Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.

He observed that children could also be seen working in workshops and were also involved in domestic labour but the successive governments had not been paying heed to the social issue. Labour secretary Khayam Hassan said the government had adopted different measures for checking child labour and that a survey for ascertaining the number of child labourers had was in progress.

He also said the government had earmarked Rs250 million for different children related projects, while Rs1.59 billion had been doled out in the Annual Development Programme for the purpose and Rs100 million would be provided by the Unicef.

The bench observed that the devolution of powers through the Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) took place in 2010 and that the government had been conducting the survey after seven years, which was a joke.

The secretary said the survey would be completed in near future after which the government would formulate a comprehensive policy in this regard.

Additional advocate general Syed Sikander Shah stated that the government had also been working on improvement of the existing laws dealing with child labour. He added that an institution by the name of Zamong Kor (our home), which had the capacity of giving protection to around 1000 children.

According to the report of Child Protection and Welfare Commission (CPWC), there was no male, female and transgender child beggar in Peshawar, Buner, Charsadda, Battagram, Lower Dir and Chitral.

It said there were only 15 child beggars in the province including one in Swabi, four in Mardan, six in Swat, one in Abbottabad, two in Kohat and one in Bannu district. Similarly, the report said there were very few child labourers in the province. Khursheed Khan said the government was not giving attention to child labour, which was a sensitive issue.

He said the government had enacted the KP Child Protection and Welfare Commission Act, 2010, and had also established the CPWC but the law had not been implemented in the province.

The petitioner said despite the establishment of the commission, the child labour issues had yet to be resolved.

He said the last survey on child labour was conducted by the federal government in 1996, which showed that there were 3.3 million child labourers in the country.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2017