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Sunday February 16, 2025

Child labour termed cause of vicious cycle of poverty

By Our Correspondent
June 13, 2022

The Hari Welfare Association (HWA) has expressed regret that more than 6.4 million children in Sindh are out of school, and that most of them are engaged in the worst forms of indecent child labour, which have deprived them of their right to health, education, protection and development.

A press release issued in connection with World Day Against Child Labour on Sunday quoted HWA President Akram Khaskheli as saying that according to his association’s estimates, there are some 1.7 million bonded labourers in the province.

Of these, said Khaskheli, more than 700,000 children are bonded labourers working under indecent and inhuman working and living conditions imposed by their landlords in the agriculture sector.

According to the data collected by the HWA, from 2013 to 2021, on the orders of Sindh’s courts, 3,329 children, including a few weeks-old minors, were released along with their adult family members from the custody of landlords in the agriculture sector. In 2021 alone, 499 children were released.

Besides the agriculture sector, children under 15 years of age are exploited, abused and tortured in the bangle, brick kiln, fishery, auto workshop, cotton picking and chilli picking sectors or activities in the province, and unfortunately, labour inspectors, social welfare officers and child protection officers do not reach and rescue them.

However, these officials have completely ignored the future of these children. Most children work as child domestic slaves, and their wages are paid to agents, who pay nominal money to their parents.

Khaskheli said that increasing child labour is not the outcome of poverty. However, these children become the cause of the vicious cycle of poverty, and their labour also reinforces discrimination and social inequality, he pointed out.

Moreover, said Khaskheli, because of the unavailability of work for adults, inflation and low-paid work, low-income families have increasingly pushed their children into joining hazardous labour. He said the government is good at introducing laws but bad at implementing them.

The HWA said that due to the non-implementation of the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950, the Sindh Child Protection Authority Act 2011, the Sindh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2013, the Sindh Bonded Labour System Abolition Act 2015 and the Sindh Prohibition of Employment of Children Act 2017, children are engaged in the worst forms of child labour.