KARACHI: Various child rights organisations on Tuesday gathered outside the Karachi Press Club and staged a demonstration against child labour in the country to mark the World Day Against Child Labour. The demonstration was organised by the Child Rights Movement Sindh, a conglomeration of dozens of organisations championing child rights in the province.
Speaking at the event, Rana Asif Habib of the Initiator Human Development Foundation said, “We organise this protest to highlight the issue of child labour in Pakistan where 13 million children are the victims of this menace.”
He said implementation on The Sindh Prohibition of Employment of Children Act 2017 was still a question mark in the province. Organisers said the number of labour inspectors in Sindh was negligible making it almost impossible to implement the relevant law.
They said the first and so far only survey to document child labour was conducted by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 1996 that showed 3.3 million children were involved in child labour and the root cause behind this atrociously large number was the fact that “60 percent people in Pakistan were living below the poverty line”.
Speakers at the event said a total of 25 million children were out of school of which 6.2 million children were out of school only in Sindh.
