LAHORE: The government should provide detailed information on its project for elimination of child and bonded labour initiated in 2014, said rights activists in a meeting at a local hotel on Tuesday.

According to the information, the Punjab government’s Integrated Project for Elimination of Child and Bonded Labour 2014 was aimed at addressing the child and bonded labour issues through social development of identified children and their families. However, the people working with brick kiln labourers and the activists say that the schools are empty and the children are still working on the kilns.

A representative from Sheikhupura, Maqsood Ahmed, who worked under the project, said the situation was so bad the furniture bought for the school was lying in empty school buildings which remained unused. He bemoaned that the Punjab Labour Department did not implement the project.

Meanwhile, the labour department’s own website says the government had allocated Rs5.1bn for completion of the project. The Punjab government also claims to have disengaged 88,000 children from brick kilns and rescued around 41,000 from the child labour in other sectors.

Ghulam Fatima of Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) said they found many children still working on brick kilns.

“The government project also included issuance of the computerised national identity cards (CNICs) to the workers and on whose basis, they would be issued Khidmat cards,” she said.

Meanwhile, in district Sheikhupura, 204 one-room schools set up informally under the government project had been closed down.

“This project costs a lot and we want to know where the money has gone if it is not being spent on it,” demanded Fatima.

She said the project was introduced without any planning, just to appease the international community. The district vigilance committee which was meant to monitor and oversee the project’s implementation did not meet after August 2016, said Fatima.

Meanwhile, PTI MPA Naushin Hamid said she had raised questions twice in the assembly regarding the project. Although a breakdown was given to her by the Labour Department, the situation at ground level was different. “Teachers have not been paid, there are no schools operating and the children are still involved in labour,” she added.

Meanwhile, Mahar Safdar Ali of the BLLF said that out of the 27 international GSP conventions meant to be implemented at least 24 were being violated.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2018