Bonded Labour Liberation Front, Pakistan (BLLF) held a seminar on the topic ‘together we can eliminate bonded labour’ for the abolition of bonded labour and child labour. Chairman HRCP I.A. Rehman (chairman of HRCP), Deputy Inspector General(r) Altaf Qammar, Justice(r) Malik Qayyum, Syeda Ghulam Fatima (BLLF), BLLF Program Manager Mahar Safdar and others addressed the seminar. The historical decision by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SC) on 18th September 1988, outlawed bonded labour and cancelled all existing bonded debts, and forbade lawsuits for the recovery of existing debts. Resultantly, The Bonded Labour (Abolition) System Act 1992 and Rules 1995 were adopted by the legislative assembly but bonded labour still prevailed in Pakistan as an accepted exercise and the seminar addressed the issue. I.A Rehman said that the restriction of 50 people to form a union should be done away with. Advance wages on brick kilns should be banned, he added. Justice(r) Malik Qayyum said that bonded labour was a main issue in Pakistan and India. He further expressed that law enforcement agencies were weak in their performance because of which bonded labour persisted in Pakistan.
