International Labour Organisation (ILO) has announced to establish Village Education and Action (VEA) clusters in Sialkot district. The ILO plan, in collaboration with Surgical Instruments Manufacturers Association (SIMA) of Pakistan, is aimed at providing non-formal education, practical skills training, recreation and linkages to health services for child workers of Sialkot's surgical industry.
ILO Sialkot Project Manager Mian Muhammad Bin Yameen and SIMA Chairman Naeem Anwar Qureshi disclosed this while addressing a meeting of surgical instruments' exporters, manufacturers and vendors here on Tuesday.
They said that ILO and SIMA were analysing the local job market and were providing pre-vocational training to young workers. Now, the ILO-IPEC had started the process of external monitoring of child labour elimination programme from Sialkot's surgical industry, they added.
An agreement to combat child labour in the surgical industry was already signed between ILO and SIMA, and SIMA was collecting data on vendor-workshops and had developed internal monitoring system in consultation with ILO-IPEC, they said.
Bin Yameen and the SIMA Chairman said the establishment of a reliable and transparent child labour monitoring system was considered vital to ensure a measurable impact of the project.
They were of the view that only social protection might not be very effective in elimination of child labour in the surgical instruments manufacturing, therefore a monitoring component had additionally been developed in collaboration with the SIMA.
Earlier, the ILO had claimed that as many as 50 percent reduction in child labour from Sialkot's surgical instruments manufacturing industry, including underage workers, hazardous situations and exploitative working conditions in the different targeted areas of Sialkot district through the provision of education and other support services.
According to the baseline survey, recently conducted by the ILO in Sialkot, there are 5,800 children (5-17 years) involved in surgical tools manufacturing in Sialkot. The average monthly household income was Rs 5,685.
Considering an average household size of 7.3, the average monthly income person in the households of working children is approximately Rs 778. The survey highlighted the children's need to learn skill coupled with education for meaningful future employment.