Government failed in ending child labour: Chairman PCF

RAWALPINDI   –   The government and other relevant authorities have badly failed in ending the Child Labour in the country as thousands of children are still engaged in the practice. “All of laws enforced to end forced child labour in the country have apparently failed to achieve the objective,” said Chairman Pakistan Citizen Forum Zaheer Ahmed Awan said this while addressing a seminar held in connection with International Child Labour Day here on Wednesday. He said that according to estimates there are million of children still engaged in the practice in the country. He said that 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, he added. He said that child labour cannot be eliminated unless government not implemented the law in letter and in spirit. He said that that attention should be paid to behaviour change of the elements fuelling child labour, like parents and factory owners. The other participants of seminar called for an effective role of labour inspectors.

They pointed out that in Rawalpindi not a single labour inspector had been working to keep a check on factories and other workplaces. They claimed that most of the labour inspectors 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.