The number of child labor is highest in Pakistan’s agricultural sector

Lahore: In Pakistan, child labor is being used the most in the agricultural sector, which can cause irreparable damage to children’s education and health, but there is no system to monitor or prevent child labor in the agricultural sector. There are effective rules for containment.

12-year-old Muhammad Ibrahim, a resident of Awan Dhaiwala area of ​​Lahore, is busy collecting potatoes from the fields along with many of his peers. Some of these children will be seven or eight years old, but these children are picking potatoes with great effort and then piling them in different places in the field. These children get part of the potatoes collected from the fields as labor which they will take home or sell.

Mohammad Ibrahim said that he used to go to school but dropped out from the fourth grade and now only works in the fields. Picking potatoes from the fields, planting paddy fields, transporting cattle to the fields, etc. He gets 12 thousand rupees per month.

There are similar stories of child laborers in the fields like Abraham. Some children come to help with their father or mother, many children work in their own fields. Agriculture and farming is their native occupation.

According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics report for the year 2021-22, more than 14 million children up to the age of 10 years are working in various sectors in Pakistan, of which 56 percent are working in the agricultural sector. The highest incidence of child labor in the agricultural sector is in South Punjab, where 26 percent of children work in cotton fields.

Iftikhar Mubarak, head of Search for Justice, a non-governmental organization working for the rights of uncles, told The Express Tribune that according to the 2019-20 survey of the Punjab Labor Department, the most child labor is in the agriculture, livestock and fishing sectors. Is. According to the Child Labor Act 2016, employing a child below the age of 15 is a legal offence.

He said that it is a fact that child labor cannot be completely eliminated from agriculture and livestock sector. There are several reasons for this, the most important of which is poverty and unemployment. Since the people living in the villages have no alternative means of earning employment, most of the families including children are seen as laborers in these sectors.

He suggested that the government should ban dangerous jobs in livestock and agriculture, including spraying poisons in crops, driving tractors, using thresher machines, watering fields at night, plowing machines, carrying goods and others. There are jobs, they should be banned that these jobs cannot be taken from children under any circumstances. Similarly, there is a need to provide alternative employment to the people living in the villages. For this, short courses can be organized for rural women and children in government school buildings.

Child labor deprives children of education, health, mental and physical well-being, says Amir Hayat Bhandara, a progressive farmer and creator of the first digital camp for farmers in Pakistan. The root causes of child labor are poverty, lack of education, weak labor laws and the informal efficient sector.

He said that it is a fact that child labor is the most in livestock and agriculture, laborers in villages take their children along with them. These families have high expenses and low income. Therefore, children work in the fields to support their parents. Children are sent to herd livestock especially sheep. Children also work to fetch fodder from the fields. He said that most of the children are employed when a crop has to be harvested.

He said that he himself has been trying to minimize child labor in livestock and agriculture for a long time, so he first started it from his village which is located in Pakpattan. . Here, child labor has been zeroed out in livestock and agri-culture activities that are harmful to children’s health.

According to the Punjab Labor Department officials, agriculture and construction sector were also included in the labor policy of 2018, but the rules regarding the inspection of the labor department in the livestock and agriculture sectors have not been made yet. The main reason for this is the lack of manpower.

Muhammad Shahid, Deputy Director and Law Officer of Punjab Labor Department said that child labor has not yet been brought into any legal framework in the agriculture sector, but work is being done on consultation with all stakeholders and making rules in this regard. .

On the other hand, Rao Zahid Mehmood, the focal person of the Labor Department, told the Tribune that no law has been made for the general farming sector in the entire country, including Punjab. There are laws regarding commercial farming and there is a ban on child labour.