How child labour effects our community

The government of Pakistan has thus far neglected the persistence of child labour; Balochistan has not set a standard age for child labourers, thus, allowing children as young as 7 years old to be enslaved.Where such laws do exist, they are not stringent.12.5 million children toil in mines, farms, households and factories. According to Pakistans Labour Force Survey 2014-15(the only survey ever conducted concerning child labour in Pakistan) 61% of the children aged 10-14 were boys and 88% hail from rural backgrounds.This highlights poverty as the major cause of child labour (alongside lack of access to education) in pakistan. These child labourers are commanded to work in egregious environments and are extraneously subjugated by severe beatings.They are employed in brick kilns, glass industry, wheat, cotton and sugarcane fields and coal mines.The worst form of child labour is seen in the tobacco industry and the brick kilns and coal mines of balochistan.Children work in extremely hazardous conditions and often fall victim to unrelenting ailments.The tobacco industry exposes them to malignant fumes while the coal mines endanger their very lives.Most workers populating the coal mines escape with chronic respiratory diseases and dysentery and a considerably shorter life expectancy.

This slide shall expound on the aforementioned instances of child labour in Pakistan. Firstly, the mines of Balochistan host a desperate plethora of dislocated refugees and orphaned or debt bonded child labourers.They are provided paltry sustenance and their accommodation is surely a violation of Human Rights; mud huts housing up to 10 workers with a severe lack of water.Furthermore, many of the workers are unregistered; this allows their employers to dismiss their legal rights.There have been reports of sexual abuse against the orphaned child labourers. Secondly, the province of Sialkot hosts multiple industries employing child labour. The miasma of dust and malignant fumes adversely affects the workers, a study showed an inordinately high concentration of heavy metals such as chromium and lead in the blood of child labourers; lead may cause kidney and brain damage while chromium may cause eye damage and asthma.