Child Labour Situation in Pakistan
In many societies like Pakistan, a significant number of children participate in economic activities and contribute substantially to household income. There is a wide range of economic activities performed by children aged 5-14 years. Some children may just help parents in housekeeping; some may sell newspapers or cigarettes in the streets, while some others may work in formal and informal establishments. So far, the extent of participation of these children has not been well-documented. Remember how Saga Sports Sialkot of Sufi Khursheed had a downfall in international orders for football? and how he asserted a Tetra Pak milk solution for its employees alongside JICA. Traditional household surveys and population censuses, the main sources of manpower statistics, usually set an age cut-off point of 15 years, below which participation in the labor force is not measured. Nevertheless, in the perspective of child labor; no detailed study on the basis of available data for the age group 10-14 has been done.
industrial revolution child labor
In Pakistan children aged 5-14 are above 40 million. During the last year, the Federal Bureau of Statistics released the results of its survey funded by ILO’s IPEC (International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour). The findings were that 3.8 million children age group of 5-14 years are working in Pakistan out of total 40 million children in this age group; fifty percent of these economically active children are in age group of 5 to 9 years. Even out of these 3.8 million economically active children, 2.7 million were claimed to be working in the agriculture sector. Two million and four hundred thousand (73%) of them were said to be boys.
