Dimunitive Labor

We have always sympathized with the miserable characters of Oliver Twist and Pip, working in gruesome conditions. Today, we can see this bleak picture prevalent in our society too. The plight of small hands toiling in dark congestion, under dead silence……the children, who like others, should be given love, color pencils and toys…

According to Wikipedia, Child Labor is the employment of children at regular and sustained labor and is usually exploitative. It can be factory work, mining, prostitution, quarrying, and agriculture, helping in the parent’s business and doing odd jobs. And all the work that they do is in all types of weather and at very minimal pays.

Child Labor has reached epidemic proportions in Pakistan. According to HRCP (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan) there are about 15 million working children in Pakistan. The children make a quarter of the skilled force. In our Third World Country, where the population rate is the highest among the world and the education system poorest, the child labor pool is anything but inexhaustible. It has become an institution in Third World countries; however, the incidences of it are also increasing in advanced countries.

The median age of children now entering the workforce is seven, which is likely to decrease owing to the increase in population as well as sky rocketing inflation and food shortage. Another cause of this epidemic are the recruitment by large factory owners voluntarily or forceful by chaining the children’s parents in debt. The owners are particularly aggressive in courting boys of age five to seven, where their dexterity and endurance are at is peak. And most of all they are economical, as they are paid slighter than one third of the pay of the adults. As one Rawalpindi land owner states “Children are cheaper to run than tractors and smarter than oxen. He prefers field hands as they have the most energy but lack discipline.

The children in rural areas are deprived of all sorts of facilities, education health. They are as starved of love as they are of food. A young mother Asma from Sheikhupura says “When my children were of three years, I told them that should pay their way and get ready to make sacrifices for the families and to be sent away from home”. She bonded her five children to the masters in distant villages.

The children work under most brutal conditions imaginable. In sports equipment factories, they sit slumped in large numbers under eerie silence giving full concentration to their work. If they speak or sleep, they are reprimanded. Once they make a mistake, their pay is withheld and punished most severely on the rear of the factory where they are hung upside down, caned, lashed and starved. The boys are frequently beaten and the girls violated. A girl tells the story of her friend who was raped by the owner and when she got ill and could work no more, she was sold off to someone else and her parents never got to know about it. For the masters, the bonded children are commodity whom they trade like livestock, bartering away their respect and everything they own.

There has been many child laws enacted in Pakistan but the problem remains lack of political will and greed. The Employment of Children Act of 1991 prohibited the use of children in hazardous occupation and environments. The Bonded Labor Act of 1992 abolished indentured servitude and the peshgi system. Though the laws are progressive, however, the government failed to provide the implementation and enforcement. The steps taken had always been cosmetic. As a Ministry of Labor Official says “We leave enforcement on the discretion of the police officers” as they understand the need of the community well.”

Behind this is an unpleasant truth about feudal system in Pakistan which hinders any reform that might weaken their authority, lower their profit margins or enfranchise the workers. They argue that such laws do not help in the development of the country. If the government imposes these laws, they would shut down the factory crippling the economy.

The need of the hour is not to eradicate but to limit the working age of children and make the working conditions humane. Also, the media along with the NGOs can play a significant role in bringing out such issues and meting out justice to those god forsaken children.