Comparative Employee Relations

Assignment No 2

Submitted to

Ms. Sara Sameen

Submitted by

Mohsin Ali 11-4239

Child labourers exceed 12m in Pakistan June 16, 2013 OUR STAFF REPORTER

SIALKOT In connection with World Day against Child Labour, Child Right Committee (CRC) is celebrating a week long campaign in the district under the theme No Child Labour in Domestic Work and demands the government to put an immediate ban on child domestic labour. According to ILO, the number of child labourers in Pakistan exceeded 12 million in 2012. The Unicef stated that there were around 10 million underage workers in the country in 2012. Similarly, Child Rights Movement (CRM) pointed out that there were approximately 9.86 million children and adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 years in Pakistan who were active in the labour force; 2.58 million of these children were between 10 and 14, while thousands more were even younger than the age of 10. According to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey 2010-11, around 4.29 percent of the children aged 10-14 years are active in the countrys labour force. Furthermore, Pakistan has the second largest out of school population in the world with 7.26 million children out of school due to poverty. The The Unicef reported that around 7.3 million children of primary school age do not attend any school. Child Right Committee District Coordinator Muhammad Arslan Khan was concerned over the fact that Pakistan was included in the list of those countries where child labour was at a rise and especially over the involvement of children in hazardous work. He said that the employment of children in domestic labour was hard to ascertain because of its highly informal or hidden nature. The Labour Inspectors were unable to monitor households where underage employees might be subjected to physical violence, long working hours, dangerous working environments, insufficient food and inappropriate accommodation, he added. According to the ILO, there were approximately 15.5 million child domestic workers (age 5 to 17 years) around the world. More than 7.4 million children in this number were aged 5-14 years. He said that thousands of children working as domestic servants were deprived of their basic right to education and were often subjected to abuse and violence.

The media reported 18 cases of severe tortured and abuse of child domestic labourers between January 2010 and December 2011, he claimed. In past 5 months total 9 cases of violence against child domestic workers were reported in media out of which 5 resulted in the death of victim child. The Child Right Committee District Coordinator urged the PML-N government to impose an immediate ban on child domestic labour. (http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/national/16-Jun2013/child-labourers-exceed-12m-in-pakistan)

Discussion
We live in a third world country where we have high inflation rate and low pays, where the literacy rate is declining where education is taken as business where quest for food is more important than quest for education because here in our country we believe we would die without food but we dont realize the fact that if we dont get education we would die either way. Child labour is strongly discouraged till the lounges of the parliament or the TV talk shows but the ground realities are very different I believe that putting a ban to something is not actually a solution its high time for all of us we should start thinking out of the box on everything which includes child labour as well. The Article above states that we should ban child labour in Pakistan by supporting it with certain facts and figures but those figures look nice on a piece of paper in the hand of some person from a government organization but not with us. My question to those who think we should ban child labour is what if the Boy working in shoes factory is the only one at home who could earn or maybe he is the only one left in his family so he have to work and earn why dont we plan big community homes for such childrens first before we ban child labour why dont we try to go to the grass roots of the issue. We can also do something even better that train them as professional in their work in the morning and pay them and in the evening at the same place make them study this help us breading professionals from grass root level they will be skilled and educated both this would boost the industry in Pakistan and yes increase the literacy rate as well and help all those who want to earn their own livings. But thats just one solution to the problem there could be many others as well if we pay some time thing critically and dig in to the grass level that what is causing this rather than simply banning something basis on paper work and statistics.