LAHORE, Jan 15: As many as 700 Pakistani child jockeys have submitted applications in response to the United Arab Emirates’ announcement that it will provide financial aid to such children as compensation all over the world, Dawn learnt on Tuesday.

The offer by the UAE government has come two and-a-half years after it imposed a ban on camel races featuring children under 16.

Under the UAE child jockey compensation package, the children appearing in the races after 1993 are eligible for it. A joint board of the UAE and Pakistan interior ministries is authorised to finalise the claims in this regard.

The Child Protection Welfare Bureau, Punjab, will receive applications till December 2008 and the board can finalise the claims by June 2009.

An official told Dawn on Tuesday that the CPWB had so far received around 700 applications, mostly from Rahim Yar Khan, Rajanpur, Dera Ghazi Khan and Muzaffargarh. “After scrutiny the bureau will submit them to the board at its meeting scheduled to be held later this month in Lahore for approval,” he added.

He, however, did not disclose the compensation amount, expressing fear that the parents\guardians might inflict an injury on the children in order to secure maximum money.

Camel jockeys from Bangladesh, Sudan and Mauritius also will get compensation under the package.

Maj Ibrahim, a UAE interior ministry officer, has already informed that no Pakistani or any other country’s child is being used in camel races in the UAE since the imposition of ban. He said robot jockeys were now being used for the purpose.

According to him, more than 700 Pakistani, 200 Bangladeshi, 60 Sudanese and 22 Mauritius child jockeys have been sent to their homeland since June 2005.

The statistics say most of the child jockeys who retuned from the UAE belong to southern Punjab. They were less than six years when they were taken to the Gulf. The bureau officials are of the view that their (real) parents are responsible for transporting them and they had done so because of abject poverty.

CPWB director (programmes) Zubair Ahmad has appreciated the UAE government’s gesture. He said the bureau would advertise and make announcement in the districts to which child jockeys belong so that the children meeting the criteria could avail themselves of the package.

He said a stipend of Rs600 a month and education facilities were being provided to the child jockeys and this programme would be interlinked with the Unicef’s integration community action plan as well.