PESHAWAR, April 19: Participants in a workshop here have called for formation of committees at the union council level to protect rights of children.
The workshop with elected councillors and nazims was organised by the Society for Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc). Nazim Peshawar City District Haji Ghulam Alwas also attended the workshop.
They said local governments could play in protecting and promoting children’s rights.
Jehanzeb Khan, provincial coordinator of Sparc, said that children were being deprived of their rights and a lare number of them were not enrolled in schools and were forced into bonded labour. Besides, he said, the government had also failed to abolish gender disparity in the education sector.
Mr Khan said the data compiled by the education department for 2005 revealed that 190,342 children were enrolled in primary schools in Peshawar district but there were only 4599 teachers for them.
Many children dropped out or never attended a school and were forced into child and bonded labour, Mr Khan said.
The number of child labour is alarming. A survey of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conducted in 1994 revealed that there were 9429 children among labourers engaged in furniture factories, auto workshops and brick kilns in and around Peshawar.
In brick kilns, where usually an entire family works as bonded labour, 3,314 labourers were children, Mr Khan said, adding that local governments should play their role in enforcing of laws related to child rights.
Local governments, he said, should set up committees at the union council level to create awareness about child rights and take notice of child abuse. There should be a ban on corporeal punishment and bonded labour, he added.
Mr Khan said that local governments could also play an active role in curbing the menace of pornography on CDs and in internet cafes because schoolchildren saw them and indulged in immoral activities.
The councillors and nazims attending the workshop supported the proposals and asked the district nazim to take necessary steps to put them into practice. They said that laws should be enforced to effectively eliminate the possibility of use of children in smuggling and other criminal activities.
Peshawar Nazim Haji Ghulam Ali said that a law was there under which FIR could be registered against parents who did not send their children to school.
“The government’s duty is to build schools and provide teachers, but it is the duty of parents to send their children to schools,” he said, adding that there had been a decrease in the cases of corporeal punishment.
However, he said, union councillors should remain vigilant and take notice if any such case occurred in their union councils.
The nazim asked the councillors to take serious notice of child rights violations and make plans for welfare of children. He promised to provide funds for projects aimed at improving conditions of children.