Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Child Labour rising in Twin Cities

ISLAMABAD: Child labour is rising in the twin cities making innocent children susceptible to physical, sexual as well as psychological abuses at the hands of their employers the most.
‘Child Labour’, a socially and culturally accepted phenomenon throughout the world, which is an important and a serious global issue through which all countries of the world are directly or indirectly affected, but it is very common in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Like other countries, the menace of child labour is spreading all over the Pakistan with a gigantic pace. The number of working children is on rise. The main reason of increasing this social evil is expanding poverty in the country.
Pakistan is one of the countries where child labour surged to the highest level, especially a year after devastating floods. It is quite astonishing that child labor exists with its same severity even in federal capital as in the other parts of the country. It is an outcome of a multitude of socio-economic factors and has its roots in poverty, lack of opportunities, high rate of population growth, unemployment, uneven distribution of resources, outdated social customs and excess of other factors.
Children from the ages of 9 to 18 are almost equally vulnerable to child labor. Children work in the industries setup in the federal capital’s Industrial Area where they work under pressure and paid less as compared to actual salary. It has been found most of the children work in the motor and cycle workshops and rest of at various places, such as; hotels, brick kilns and general stores.
Child bonded labour is another mode of child labour in Pakistan that refers to situations where a child’s labor services are offered in exchange for a loan. Bondage is intergenerational: once a parent is no longer able to work, debts are passed down from parent to child.
Growing child labour in twin cities exposes the governmental and non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs) claims of striving to prevent children from working. Child labour has surged in Pakistan in the year since record floods devastated much of the country, as some of the poorest families continue to be deprived of their livelihoods in local economies that show few signs of recovering.
Hence child labour is ever increasing entity that may lead our country to despair in the times to come. The hands a nation needs to strengthen its foundations are being forced to earn livelihood to feed his whole family. Pakistan’s bright future is linked with its youth and if youth is forced to work in auto workshops or industries instead of getting education in schools and colleges then dismal and bleak future is waiting for us. It is the responsibility of government to ensure free education, facilities at work and reasonable salary for children. Government observes the International Child Labour day every year with renewed commitments to control this social menace but never takes it seriously.

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