Poverty and lack of educational facilities are the root causes of the child labour, was the consensus of speakers at a conference on "Sustainable Development" here on Thursday.
Speaking at the second day of the 3-day conference, organised by the Sustainable Development and Policy Institute (SDPI), they pointed out that Pakistan had around 70 million children, while 25 million of them were doing labour and being denied of their fundamental rights.
Majority of the working children was supplementing their families income, while few of them are also working for support their own education, the speakers highlighted.
It was also pointed out that in most of the remote areas, people were even selling their children due to extreme poverty and social compulsions.
Rana M Daniyal said that Africa and Asia together account for over 90 percent of total of child labour mostly prevalent in rural areas.
"Children work for a variety of reasons, the most important being poverty," he added. "Though children are not well paid, they still serve as major contributors to family income in our country," Daniyal added.
Dr Qaiser Bengali said the government was not serious to address the child labour issue and merely holding conferences and formulating policies is not its ultimate solution. "Making education cheap and compulsory will be an effective tool for addressing the menace of child labour than formulating prohibitive laws," he was of the view.
Shyama Lilamani Wikramanayake Salgado, a member of the International Labour Organisation, said ILO was moving towards improving decent working conditions for labour by providing basic facilities at their work places.
She said that education must be related to labour market to control the unemployment and child labour. Dr Himayatullah Khan said that child labour leads to social, economic and psychological exploitation of children.
Family break-down and HIV/Aids are other factors responsible for the increasing child labour in an economy, he pointed out. Shahbaz Bokhari underscored that extreme poverty and other social compulsions increase bonded labour in a certain society.
In regards to discussion on WTO, the speakers expressed the hope that the forthcoming WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong would address the concerns and reservations of developing countries and the dialogue would provide more market access to the developing countries. They stated that the government should have included people from all walks of life before taking decisions over the WTO issues.
"Although the pessimism is reigning now on the forthcoming WTO ministerial conference, it is evident that there will be second round of talks to address the Non Agriculture Market Access (NAMA), Services and development issues", said Deputy Secretary WTO Wing in the Ministry of Commerce, Asad Haya-ud-Din.
Responding to various questions, Asad said that WTO draft was friendly and the agreements were binding commitment to the developing countries but not binding for the developed countries.
When asked about why Pakistan joined Cairns Group, Asad said, "Although Pakistan is not a major agriculture exporting country, it was decided at a higher level that the country would join the group formally in its meeting on December 13".
Mohammad Saeed, editor of a trade periodical, urged the developing countries to develop infrastructure for enhancing competitiveness and gaining more access to markets in the developed countries.
Tahir Hussnain, representative of civil society said trade liberalisation would create more unemployment and reduce tax receipts of the poor countries.
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