Labor Day An Insight on Child Labor

Labor Day Special: Labor Day An Insight on Child Labor

by Dr. Aaminah Siddique

Children are smiles and laughter and games; an image full of sunshine on a gloomy winter morning, a rainbow after the rain; children are the little angels that fill our world with the happiness it needs to survive.

Unfortunately, at dire times like the present, when war stands upon our heads like a vulture above a dying rabbit, that innocence of a child once born is now forcefully transformed into a strength that he needs to survive.

Today, about 6% of all Asian children are orphan, which is a major drawback on accounts of development of a country and its people. Especially in countries such as Pakistan, besides the fact that we are still a developing country, struggling to rescue ourselves from the thorns of terrorism, the lack of proper orphanages does not come as a welcoming gesture to the ever increasing number of orphans every day.

With no other man to prevent the economic condition of a household from collapsing, these young kids are forced to leave their homes and work for the family, for the sole purpose of survival. It is true that they could find shelter at an orphanage or a foster care, but they choose to stay at home with their mothers and younger siblings. At this point, a job is the only ray of hope to survival that they have.

But incidences of child abuse at work have been reported since a long time, and are the reason why since then, Child Labor has been thoroughly discouraged, making it hard for poor children to find work to earn their bread.

So, where do they go, if not beg on the streets, playing handicap, or stealing, or getting involved in hideous crimes like drug dealing? Because, according to the Pakistan, Employment of Children Act, 1991, any form of employment of a child below age 14 is strictly prohibited.  In spite of this Act, theHuman Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated in the 1990s that 11 million children were working in the country, half of those under the age of ten.

Now, abuse at work should be condemned at all forms; and on accounts of Child Labor, I would downright agree, as I am not immoral to second child abuse, whatsoever. But Child Labor is widely misunderstood today, so I would rid it of this discourteous term and address it as Child Employment.

In the United States, children even below the age of 12 are allowed to work on agricultural jobs, and this comes as no less than a help for their parents. Child employment here produces vast grounds of production and development for the people, and provides them a better financial structure for their household than with one man, working to feed, say 10 people at a time.

The Human Rights Organizations are too busy in condemning the very act of employment of children, failing to comprehend the fact that by taking away the opportunity to work, they would leave the child with no other option than to acquire an incorrect mode of earning the money he needs to survive.

Instead, my point here is to highlight the solution to the problem, and that is a suggestion to renew the Child Employment Act from the year 1991.

On accounts of the drastic change in the country’s economic condition, children should be allowed to work, on the grounds that their security is in safe hands. For this, the Act must consider including conditions that would provide them all the rightful benefits as employees. These working children must be provided with books as well as all the other prospects of learning through rights to education. At the same time, it must be the employer’s liability to provide increment, health benefits and even housing facilities and vacations to the child employees. And any abuse at work, through beating or extra working hours, should be met with strict litigation against the employer.

It is not hard for us to get rid of the menace of child abuse this way, if child employment is accepted as a part of the society, and attempts are made to make it easier for the working children. It is always better to think outside the box and find ways that allow us to defy misconceptions and stereotypical perceptions when survival is the goal.

Dr. Aaminah Siddique, pharmacist/ freelance writer; interests: religion/human psychology; blogs atwww.deadpoetsanctuary.wordpress.com/