As the speakers at Thursday's session of SDPI seminar on "Sustainable Development" dwelt on the issue of child labour it emerged that nearly a third of the child population in this country is engaged in earning a living or supplementing family income.
Out of about 70 million children, 25 million are said to be part of the workforce. That is bad enough for the children who are deprived of their basic right to education and a wholesome childhood, the situation is unhelpful for the developmental process as well.
Lack of education, it hardly needs saying, results in low efficiency and production standards. The speakers identified lack of education facilities and poverty as the root causes of child labour. Indeed, there is a strong nexus between the two factors. It is no longer true that poor people are unaware of the worth of education.
Most do want to send their offspring to school, if for nothing else, to better their prospects in the job market. But they find it too difficult to feed their children and also bear the expenses of education.
Hence, they send children to work so that they can learn a skill and supplement the family incomes, too. In most cases, however, these young people work as apprentices for long periods, extending to years, on nominal wages.
Since it is poverty that drives children of the poor to work when they should be studying, it is plain that a mere ban on child labour is not going to be of much use. In fact, the issue had generated much controversy when some time ago the EU and the US had refused to import products involving child labour.
The government had argued, not entirely without justification, that in many cases child workers were the breadwinners of their families, therefore, forcing them out of work would bring them adversity rather than happiness.
Yet in a situation such as that, too, a way can, and must, be found to have them work and acquire at least basic education in the work place.
On the general level, the government must fulfil its responsibility of providing education to all, an objective it is committed to under the UN Millennium Goals. As a matter of fact, even in the developed countries governments provide free basic education to all citizens.
It is all the more necessary that the government should perform that responsibility in a country such as ours where nearly 40 percent of the populace lives below the poverty line.
Unfortunately, until recently, our leaders have been long on the rhetoric and short on action with regard to popularising education. Successive governments' budgetary allocations to this sector plus health care have hovered around two percent of the GDP whereas UNESCO's minimum recommended standard is 4 percent of the GDP. No wonder, Pakistan is behind the region's countries in this vital field.
The government now claims to be in the process of making substantial increases in the education budget. Coming back to the issue of child labour, heed needs to be paid to the advice that a respected social scientist, Dr Qaiser Bengali, had to offer at the SDPI seminar. Said he, "Making education cheap and compulsory will be an effective tool for addressing the menace of child labour rather than formulating prohibitive laws."
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