KARACHI, May 22: Speakers at a seminar on Thursday said that the government, civil society organizations and trade unions should join hands to forge a comprehensive strategy to counter the ever-growing menace of child labour.
They were speaking at the seminar on the Elimination of Child Labour, organized jointly by the National Labour Federation and the Sindh Employees Social Security Institution (SESSI).
Sindh labour director Gul Mohammad Rind, Karamat Ali of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), Ahsanullah Khan of the Workers Employers Bilateral Council of Pakistan (WEBCOP), SESSI chief Nasir Hayat, Mohammad Islam of the NLF, Shirin Rahmatullah and others spoke on the occasion.
One of the speakers said that though millions of children were working in different trades, it was very difficult to eliminate child labour unless one of its major causes—poverty—was effectively addressed and eliminated.
Another speaker said that a working child could not just be taken off the work as his or her income was a substantial part of their family’s earnings.
One of the speakers suggested that a working child should provided education and training in some trade, given some scholarship as an incentive and allowed to work so that the income of the family was not affected.
One speaker was of the view that the child labour issue was a conspiracy of the developed countries which wanted to cripple the developing countries’ economies.
A speaker said that some time back the issue of child labour in the Sialkot industries had been highly exaggerated by NGOs, and it seriously affected the economy and exports of the country. He alleged that certain NGOs and other organizations, which received funds from the developed countries, had exaggerated the issue of child labour in their reports.
Another speaker said that international financial institutions always paid huge funds to carry out studies on child labour, but never gave serious financial assistance for any project to eliminate it. He claimed that hundreds of millions had been misappropriated by certain government organizations and NGOs in the name of child labour, and the issue still remained unresolved.
One of the speakers said that the government wanted to sign the ILO convention fixing the minimum age for a worker at 18 years, which was seriously objected by the industrialists and the government has not yet signed it.
He said that with the present rate of inflation and unemployment, poor people having large families would find it difficult to take their children off work.
One speaker said that industrialists hired children as they were paid less, while an adult worker would not only demand higher wages but might also indulge in trade union activities, which was not liked by employers.
The speakers also urged the government to take steps to ensure that children working in hotels, garages and the transport sector were not sexually abused.
They urged the government to take stringent steps so that children were not trafficked to the Gulf States where they were used as camel jockeys, and many of them were crippled due to falls from the camels in the races and many lost their lives in the deadly sport.
They said that developing countries, particularly Pakistan, were being targeted for child labour, and if the government and industrialists were not careful in handling the situation the economy might suffer severly .
They said that the main causes of child labour were poverty, unemployment, large family size and inflation, and unless these were eliminated no policy or programme could be successful in eradicating the menace.