Photo credit- Rana Sajid Hussain via Getty Images.

About 16 lakh children are working as child labor in Sindh province of Pakistan. This figure has come to light in a recently conducted survey. This survey was conducted by the Labor Department of Sindh Government with the help of UNICEF and Bureau of Statistics during July-August 2024. According to the survey, 10.3% of Sindh’s children aged between 5 to 17 years, i.e. about 16 lakh are doing some kind of work.

Of these, about 8 lakh (50.4%) are children who work in hazardous conditions. Such as working for very long hours, working in strong sunlight or cold, and working in agriculture or factories with unsafe tools. Only 40.6% of the working children go to school, while 70.5% of the children who do not work go to school. That means child labor is also affecting education.

Worst conditions in Shahdadkot district

Qamar Shahdadkot district leads in Sindh in child labour, where 30.8% children are working. It is followed by Tharparkar (29%), Tando Muhammad Khan (20.3%), and Shikarpur (20.2%). Child labor is lowest in Karachi i.e. 2.38%.

Sindh Provincial Labor Department Director Syed Muhammad Murtaza Ali Shah said that the Sindh government is taking steps to prevent child labor such as updating laws, making people aware, and raiding factories and shops. Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has also formed a special task force to deal with this problem.

Government formed special task force

Shah said that compared to 1996, child labor has reduced by about 50%. In 1996 this rate was 20.6%, which has now come down to around 10%. The government has also started social protection schemes to help poor families, so that children can study instead of working.

However, children’s rights activists say there is still a lot of work left to do. SPARC, an organization working against child labour, says that poverty, large families and lack of awareness about the rights of children are the biggest reasons for this.

Spark official Nazara Jahan said that 33.7% of the poorest families have at least one child working. He said that as long as employment increases, access to education becomes easier and poverty decreases, it will be very difficult to eliminate child labour.