Child Labour, A Crime Killing Our Future:

A Little Boy Working in a Shop in Punjab

Child labour, not new to Pakistan and world. Why it should be stopped, why there are laws against the children working, what does it do to our country? To answer these questions its necessary to understand what child labour is in the first place."

Some misunderstand child labour by thinking that all work done by children is child labour but according to ILO and UNICEF not all work done by children can be considered as child labour unless it is affecting their health, their schooling and their personal development in any negative way. It means without the loss of any of the above things if a child is working then it is not child labour but child work. We can differentiate child labour between child work by looking at the age of a child, type and hours of work performed, working conditions as well as the development stage of individual countries.

Nearly 12.5 million children are working in Pakistan according to a statement issued by the Child Rights Movement (CRM) National Secretariat. Pakistan is currently facing a lot of issues one of the major cause for child labour is poverty. Poverty can be considered as root cause of child labour because the average daily wage of a middleclass person in Pakistan is around 6$ and has to feed nine or ten people with their daily wage. 17.2% of population lives below poverty line and the children are forced to work in order to feed their families. The other major cause is education and lack of development in Katchi Abadis of Pakistan.

Child labour does not only kill the future of a child or his/her family but the rise in child labour is killing the future of Pakistan as well. Children working and not studying will never be able to contribute to the society to their potentials which can turn into disaster in the future.

Now it’s time to decide how to stop child labour once and for all by making efforts to improve the standards of education by offering free quality education and creating awareness about the issue and making sure that the laws against child labour are being followed properly.