The small hands in bonded labour

topic:	Child rights
located:	Pakistan
editor:	Shadi Khan Saif

Innocent children forced into bonded labour for tiring long hours in the coal mines, brick kilns and sweatshops across Pakistan fails to challenge the moral ethics of the collective society despite reoccurring tragedies.

The much-needed conscious and organised opposition towards child labour seriously lacks among Pakistani consumers of the products made by force through these small hands in a country of over 200 million. Hence, on the policymaking level, it fails to push the political elite towards legislation and enforcement of the already adopted laws on it.

No one seems to care for the millions of children pushed forever in the shackles of poverty and misery.

Most of the towering buildings and fancy villas in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, and other major urban centres such as Lahore and Rawalpindi are made of bricks produced with backbreaking labour by the bounded child workers.

The flagship annual report on State of Human Rights by the country’s premier Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) notes that, in a year of general elections, it was perhaps inevitable that the progress and observation of human rights issues might be suspended, if not forgotten altogether.

It highlighted the alarming frequency of mining accidents in the country’s restive southern Balochistan province.

The rights watch documented at least three major accidents in 2018, in which at least 57 miners, including children, were killed. It also points out that, in September, the Supreme Court asked the government to file a reply on a petition that moved to highlight the deaths of over 300 mine workers since 2010. Despite this, there has been no concerted effort to monitor and enforce occupational health and safety in these mines.

I remember visiting one such mine in the deserted mountains six years ago not far from a Pakistani army garrison on the outskirts of Queeta city. The scenes there were heartbreaking. And, it seems nothing has changed.

Desperate and neglected miners from poor parts of the country have been working in these mines for decades, only to die one day in the most likely accidents that hardly become the headline in prime time news dominated by political mud throwing.

The laws have been written that no child below the age of 14 should endure work in a hazardous environment. Sadly, these laws are nto enforced, and many children suffer because of it. © ILO

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