Daily Times

It was the end of the year. It was the day of excitement. It was the day of sadness and it, too, was the day of happiness.

Though the weather was cloudy, raining slowly, us children were wandering here and there happily. Suddenly a thought struck my mind! It hurt me a lot as I could not bear it.

I remembering fainting and the children around me running away. When I regained my consciousness, I saw the orphans sitting near my head and calling out to me, “Munaj, are you alive or died?”

“Yes, I am alive,” I managed to say. The children, who were sitting under the sky, started crying then I asked the reason. One of them replied, “Why don’t we have the right to live our lives luxuriously?”

I hesitated in answering as I didn’t know the children well but I could only gauge how unhappy they were.

Lost deep in thought, my friend Ali’s voice interrupted me, “Munaj, these young boys belong to very poor families. They dream of acquiring education, yet they cannot owing to lack of money. These boys were studying in Grade 5 but were expelled for not being able to afford notebooks and other necessary items for studying, owing to lack of financial support.”

“What do you do,” I asked one of the boys. “I’m working in a garage,” he responded.

“Do you not wish to become a successful man in the future?” I asked him.

‘I wanted to be a doctor as I worked hard to pass the medical test but my dreams were crushed as medical colleges are very hard to afford. I really wanted to be a doctor and be able to treat my fellow villagers,’ a boy called Aziz said

“I’m very unfortunate. All my former classmates now have great jobs and are living quite comfortably, but I’m still empty handed and can’t even feed my own self,” he replied sadly. “I wanted to be a doctor as I worked hard to pass the medical test but my dreams were crushed as medical colleges are very hard to afford. I really wanted to be a doctor and be able to treat my fellow villagers,” a boy called Aziz said.

Here, several questions arise. Why is the government of Balochistan asleep and not able to assist the youth to achieve their goals? Why are most of the children deprived of obtaining education; are children born to suffer only?

The answer is, “The Article 25-A, which states that every child must be dispensed free education in the country.” But here, the laws have failed to provide the rights of the citizens.

The government of Balochistan has to follow the Constitution of the country where it has mentioned that all children aged five to 16 must get free-of-cost education. One of my teachers once told me, “Munaj, if you see the world, it is very beautiful and every person wants to see the beauty in it. In a similar manner, Balochistan is beautiful as well but, it is sad to see the lives of children here being wasted.”

Balochistan is always left in the lurch where most of the beautiful children are working under the illegal laws which are unbearable; depriving them of their ground-laying rights from birth to death.

The writer is a teacher at Dynamic English Language Teaching Academy and a student of LLB at Turbat University. He can be reached at munaj1gul@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, February 5^th 2019.