Voice Of Children

Karar Ali

There is a need for eliminating child labor in Pakistan. Child labor and child trafficking negatively affect human capital development and the overall national development agenda. When children do not go to school they are denied the knowledge and skills needed for national development. Educating children, rather than forcing them to work, could yield enormous economic benefits for developing nations, through increased productivity and human capital. Benefits of education however large, may not be enough to convince poverty struck families to stop sending children to work as the concern over household survival outweighs that of children’s future earnings, therefore this is the problem that Pakistan faces today.

Child labor in Pakistan is perhaps most rampant in a north-western province called Sialkot, near the border with Kashmir, which is an important production centre for exports goods such as sporting goods. Thousands of Pakistani children, many under the age of 10, get less than 10p an hour stitching soccer balls for export around the world. About three-quarters of all the high-quality footballs used in international competitions are made here where child labour is perhaps the most rampant (In 1994, it pumped the equivalent of $385 million into the Pakistan economy).

I think we need to educate our people and and also has to repair our damage culture. Children are not the labour material they are for love and its their right to get proper education and care from everyone. No one will support child labour and use them as an instrument or tool to achieve negative goals.

—Karachi

LAHORE:

“The state of child nutrition in Pakistan is alarming,” Prof Shakila Zaman of Children’s Hospital said on Monday.

She was addressing a four-day training workshop on In-patient Management of Severe Acute Malnutrition with Medical Complications.

The four-day workshop was organised by the World Health Organisation to train the staff at the newly established stabilisation centre at the hospital. The centre has been set up to treat severe malnutrition.

Prof Zaman shared findings of the National Nutrition Survey 2011 that studied children under five years of age.

She said that 43.6 per cent of the children in Pakistan were stunted (underdeveloped), 15.1 per cent wasted (lacking energy), and 31.5 per cent underweight.

She further said that 32.7 per cent of the children suffered from an iron deficiency, 30.3 per cent from a vitamin-A and 40 per cent from a zinc deficiency.

“More shockingly, 62.5 per cent children are anaemic,” she said.

Prof Zaman said that the newly created stabilisation centre will help treat children and mothers with severe malnutrition.

The training was arranged jointly by the World Health Organisation, the United Nations International Children Education Fund and the Health Department.

The session was presided over by Children’s Hospital dean Faisal Tahir.

Dr Babar Alam, the WHO operations officer said that seven stabilisation centres were already functional in the Punjab, including two in Lahore. The new centre will start working from April 1.

Seven WHO facilitators trained 24 doctors and nurses on community mobilisation, supplementary feeding, out-patient’s therapeutic programme and functioning of the stabilisation centre’s essential components.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 27th, 2012.