HYDERABAD, Dec 21: Domestic violence against children and abuse at workplace were cited as the main factors pushing them to commit crimes at the seminar on ‘child labour and protection to children’ held at the local press club on Friday.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement MNA, Prof Khalid Wahab, blamed both parents and teachers for resorting to violence against the children, which in turn make them more often than not turn to crime.

The seminar was organised by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s special task force for Sindh in connection with the ‘Free Child Labour Week.’

Prof Wahab said that the entire society was to blame for the increasing incidence of child labour in the country.

Blaming the broad disparity in income levels for the evils in society, he said that the two per cent of the country’s population, ruling over the country, was responsible for this evil.

Stressing the need for individual, as well as collective efforts, to end child labour in the country, he said that he would spearhead the debate on child labour in the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, Jam Saqi, a leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, said that the state was responsible for providing unemployment allowance to each of its jobless citizen in all the civilised and developed countries of the world.

He, however, added that in Pakistan, even the children were subjected to forced labour, abuse at workplace and domestic violence.

Other speakers, on the occasion, highlighted the issue by saying that Pakistani rulers, intellectuals and the upper class had become insensitive to the problems faced by the common man.

They called for strict enforcement of the International Labour Organization’s convention 182, saying that over a million children were working in different factories in the country. They said that the convention should be incorporated in the Constitution of Pakistan.

They said that only five per cent of the 50,000 non- governmental organizations, working in the country’s social sector, were doing some real work to improve the living standards of the poor people.

An ordinance, they said, had been promulgated regarding compulsory education of children but it remains to be implemented, adding that even minor boys were made to work in factories of Kotri and Hyderabad.

Others who spoke on the occasion included the coordinator of the HRCP’s special task force, Nasreen Shakeel, Aftab Ahmed, Momin Khan, Ghafar Malik, Amar Sindhu and S. Lal Ahuja.