Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) will launch a national level Child Labour Free Week Campaign from June 11-16 to highlight harms of child labour and promote collective efforts to tackle it.
Under the campaign being arranged to mark World Day against Child Labour falling on June 12, SPARC will arrange an orientation or discussion session June 11 at Islamabad Press Club.
SPARC has called upon the federal and provincial governments to undertake effective legislative and administrative initiatives to address the growing prevalence of child labour in the country. In Pakistan, the employment of underage children in work activities, ranging from light to hazardous forms of labour exists in a number of sectors with varying degrees of prevalence.
Recent estimates indicate that around 11-12 million children-half of them below the age of ten are employed as child laborers across the country.
This is a serious cause for concern as underage employment undermines a child’s physical and emotional development. In Islamabad Capital Territory, children are found in begging, car wash, domestic child labor and in workshops.
The situation of child labour is grave throughout the country and serious steps are needed to be taken to tackle child labor. International Labour Organisation (ILO), Pakistan has also chalked out programmes to observe World Day against Child Labour-2012.
The day would provide a spotlight on right of children to be protected from child labour and from other violations of fundamental human rights.
Drinking plain water reduces risk of diabetes: Research proves that women, who choose plain water over sweet fizzy drinks or beverages, have a lower risk of developing diabetes.
According to the researchers replacing sweet drinks with water could help stave off the metabolic disorder, Mail Online Reported.
However adding water to the sugary beverages a person consumes during the day won’t make a difference, they said.
The results are based on the drinking habits of 83,000 women followed for more than a decade.
People have recommended drinking plain water instead of sugar-sweetened beverages, he said, `and the question is whether this kind of substitution has any impact on diabetes’. Dr Hu and his team collected date from the massive Nurses Health Study which tracked the health and lifestyle of tens of thousands of women across the US. The bottom line, he said, is that plain water is one of the best calorie-free choices for drinks, and `if the water is too plain, you can add a squeeze of lemon or lime’. Dr Barry Popkin, a professor at the University Of North Carolina School Of Public Health who was not involved in the study, said: ‘It is essentially not that water helps, except with hydration, but that the others hurt.’
