As I stopped at the red light I glanced outside and there on the footpath was a beggar woman with her infant daughter in her lap. Quite an ordinary sight in Karachi these days but here things were a little different.
The little girl in the lap was surrounded by flies and the mother was in no hurry to do anything about it. Once in a while she would make a half-hearted attempt to shoo them away but not with much vigour or concern. The little girl seemed used to this also and slept unmindful of the flies on her face and arms.
To me the sight was very painful as I thought of all the precautions we take to protect our children. I remember how alert I would be when I even heard the buzzing of a mosquito in our bed-room at night fearing that it might sting my sleeping children.
This is not the only difference between the children being brought up on the streets of Karachi and those that by the Grace of God have a roof on their heads and a pair of caring patients to look after them.
My heart comes to my mouth when nearly every day at many street corners I see toddlers roaming around unescorted and unsupervised in heavy traffic and I can only attribute their safety to a miracle by the Creator.
A more frightening aspect of this is the fact that many of these children are mothered by teenagers who themselves most probably were born and grew up on the footpaths and by-lanes of this metropolis.
At that young age one cannot expect them to act with responsibility or bring up these children to become anything more than more street beggars added to the streets of Karachi.
So how many children do live on the streets of Karachi? We are not a country where exact figures are available about any aspect of our society but estimates suggest that there are 1.5 million street children in Pakistan - a number which is increasing rapidly for reasons of displacement, migration and extreme poverty.
Out of this fifty thousand are in Karachi alone. Add to this the rising numbers of runaway children forced to leave their homes due to violence in the household and now increasing violence in educational institutions whose reports are usually hushed up.
How many times have we heard that children are the future of a country? Imagine how we are preparing for the future with the stunted mental and physical growth of 1.5 million children whose numbers keep growing.
In addition to street children, there are also child labourers whose future is as dark as the street children. According to law, no child below the age of 14 years shall be employed in work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment.
Just drive around the city and you will see how this law is openly flouted. You can see children below the age of 14 working openly at tire puncture shops, mechanic shops and other such businesses.
Children who like our children should be in schools are not only deprived of education but exposed to all kind of abuses and this is more evident in rural areas where many children are part of whole families working as bonded labourers. These children will never see the inside of a school or enjoy the thrill of sports or the competitive nature of activities that our children take for granted.
It is not that children from well-to-do families are having a safe passage in life in Pakistan. Our educational institutions are increasingly threatened by drug peddlers and there is an alarming increase in use of drugs amongst the teenage population of the country.
According to a report by an NGO, a large number of pupils of leading private schools in Islamabad are addicted to drugs and this menance is spreading in all major cities. In Karachi apart from schools the poor and underprivileged who cannot afford these highly priced drugs rob, steal, and beg to get a shot.
Many of these can be seen under overpasses lying on the road or huddled together smoking whatever they can afford. Stories of drug addicts sometimes killing their entire families make the rounds. The reason mostly being that a frustrated wife refuses to support her husband’s addiction any longer.
We are a country rich in natural resources which for some strange reason we have never exploited. In the same vein we are a country endowed with the wealth of youth and we continue to squander it year after year and with increasing intensity. We need to reverse the trend. Save our children the real wealth of our nation.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
The writer is a well-known columnist
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