PESHAWAR, Dec 2: All of laws enforced to end forced child labour in the country have apparently failed to achieve the objective as, according to estimates, there are as many as 22.5 million children still engaged in the practice.

According to the Employment of Children Act (ECA) 1991, a child of less than 14 years of age should not be involved in carpet weaving, cement manufacturing, cloth printing, dyeing, the process of using toxic, metals, and substances such as lead, mercury, manganese, pesticide and asbestos.

However, most of the organizations in the private sector are filled with minor child workers owing to lack of monitoring by the labour department and other agencies concerned.

These observations were made during a consultation programme held at a local hotel on Thursday on 'Coordinated efforts for the elimination of Child Labour,' under the auspices of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child.

NWFP Labour and Industries Minister Malik Zafar Azam presided over the programme in which social workers, clerics, officials and labour leaders participated. According to most of the participants, child labour cannot be eliminated unless ECA was implemented in letter and in spirit.

It was agreed that ECA should not be implemented in factories or other workplaces where proprietors were willing to provide a few hours a week for child education. It was stressed that attention should be paid to behaviour change of the elements fuelling child labour, like parents and factory owners.

The participants called for an effective role of labour inspectors. They pointed out that in 12 districts of the NWFP not a single labour inspector had been posted to keep a check on factories and other workplaces.

They claimed that most of the labour inspectors in some districts had been indirectly involved in the promotion of child labour as they did not visit such institutes where children less than 14 years of age were working on nominal wages.

Defending their performance, the labour department officials said the labour court was not supporting them and informed the participants that when they registered cases of violation of labour rights against the proprietors, the court fined them around Rs300 per person and let them go.

There were a number of other cases pending with the labour court, they alleged. The labour minister said that though the provincial government was aware of the root causes of child labour, it was unable to ban the practice owing to what he called its shortcomings.

He said in the early days of the MMA government, a strict approach had been adopted on the subject, however soon a number of widows and helpless people contacted him and requested to lift the restriction so that their children could earn livelihood for their dependent families.

However, he said, the government planned to eliminate child labour from the top and added that all ministers and secretaries had been directed not to hire children for domestic jobs.