Its 6 am in the morning, the ten year old Bushra is up. Everybody is in a hurry rushing and getting ready. She quickly packed the school bag and left for school, not to attend the school but to drop kids of her own age accompanied by driver. On the way back the driver cracked dual meaning jokes and promised her to buy an ice cream, on the condition that she has to stay in his servant quarter for sometime. She is too young to apprehend something . Only thing on her mind is that she has to do cleaning and washing. Her cheeks still hurting from the slap when her baji leashed out the anger on lousy cleaning. Her head spinning too as she slept very late last night after finishing the house chores. She badly wants to steal out sometime for watching movie once her baji leaves for committee party. The last time her mother visited was three months back to take advance of nine thousand as her monthly salary is three thousand. She is missing home and her playmates.
This is a small glimpse of the domestic child labour’s life, working at our places. In our society they are treated as children of some other breed, the economic disparity makes us assume that children of same age don’t have same capabilities, tendencies and capacities. These children face lack of sleep, ruthless working hours , no play n fun time ,poor nutrition , sexual and physical abuse and no medical care. Under the article 25-A of constitution, free and compulsory education is identified as a right for all children from 5 to 16 years of age.
The Punjab Provincial Assembly has just passed the ‘Punjab Prohibition of Child Labour’ at Brick Kilns bill on Monday.
The bill prescribes a six month prison term and up to Rs500,000 fine . This law prohibits employment of children under 14 years of age at kilns .
Law and legislation had remained unkind towards the domestic child labour , they work for meager salaries and their working hours are sometimes 18 hours in a day. Legally all form of slavery/forced labour is banned in Pakistan but in reality more than 10 million children are employed as child labour. They are victims of their parents financial needs, extreme poverty, debt bondage ,loss of parents and urban rural migration. Child labourers are preferred as they are more compliant, easy to manipulate and cheaper. As Grace Abbott said: “Child labour and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labour of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labour to the end of time”.
According to press reports only in 2013, atleast 21 children were tortured to death , 19 of them were girls. There has been cases in the most developed and posh area of Lahore where the employer raped , sexually abused and tortured the girl child labour to death.
Those who escape such fates, lives and manages their lives on day to day basis. Their employers, who happen to be mothers themselves, proudly tell that how they have trained that young child to mop, sweep, wash and run around for errands. If they buy these young ones even a candy, it is boosted as if the humanity is served. They are left at the whims of other domestic staff for further abuse. Child Domestic Workers (CDW) are deprived of all fundamental rights given in the constitution of Pakistan (such as Article 11,25(3),25A). There are no recent statistics on CDW in Pakistan. The state denies the sufferings of these
children .
Shazia Masih, 10 years of age, whose cause of death was reported as fall from stairs by her employer. The actual cause of her death was due to brutal torture and starvation for many days, as later proved by medical report. The cases are numerous but the CDW are denied of any rights .
Their fate depends upon a stroke of pen by legislators who need to define minimum age limit, maximum working hours and minimum wage limit. Again we just cannot ignore our individual roles. Providing them the basic right to education, rest, proper food and abuse free environment is our duty too. Here is another true story.
Fifteen years back in the quarters of new campus Punjab university, a little girl whose mother had died, used to sneak in her father’s employer Dr. Khan’s house often. Later she started working there as her step mother refused to keep her. She worked for that family for next twenty years and used to do little chores and run for errands. Along with pay for her work she got affection, love and education . Today she is teaching at a school after securing her graduation degree.
These kids are as precious as our own children, their tiny hands are to hold pencil and small feet are for running around while playing. Do not deprive them off their childhood as we await for a law against child domestic workers.
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children” (Nelson Mandella)
Nabiha Shahram is a children’s right activist and a former educationist