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Last Updated on 15-01-2012 overview
Living on the streets
overview Sixteen-year-old Muhammad
Ali and his younger brother Noor alias Tora who is 13 years old, have
had enough experience after years of toil
to work as skilled workers at a gloves manufacturing unit in a residential
unit in the
Korangi Industrial Area. Eight years ago, their father, who himself was a
daily-wage labourer, had died and they were left with no option but to work
in factories at a very early age to earn their bread and butter. Tora was only five years
old when this tragedy hit his family and he along with his elder brother
started working in the gloves manufacturing unit and were paid Rs10 each
a week. Their ‘Ustad’, who is their employer as well, has
installed six gloves stretching machines at this unit where dozens of other
workers work besides them to earn their livelihood. As both
are now trained
enough, their Ustad has appointed them as ‘Karigar’ and
each one of them is paid Rs3,000
per week. The two teenaged brothers, who belong to
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP)
can now easily manage to rent a
house in Bilal Colony at Rs3,500 per month where
they live with their aging mother and a
younger sister. Ali
and Tora are not the only
adolescent children who work for industrial units as ‘workers.’
There are countless other teenagers who are contributing their share towards
the industrial sector. All these
children have one thing in
common and that is extreme poverty which
forces them to start work as labourer in
some industries. On paper, there is no child
labour in Pakistan but literally hundreds of industries, especially the
tanneries, textile and carpet industries in the metropolis, have employed
thousands of children as workers due to the cheap labour they provide. Many
industrialists have been converting their industries from the formal to the
informal sector for the last of two years and they have opened countless
small factory outlets in residential units where they not only get cheap
electricity but cheap labour in the form of children. Bilal Colony and Gulzar
Colony are the two residential areas of KIA where thousands of children work
at home-based small industrial units.
The leather garment manufacturers have
opened around 250 small industrial units in Bilal Colony where a large number
of children are engaged in the manufacturing process. These home-based industrial units have from five to
50 stretching machines and most of these units manufacture export
quality leather gloves and some other leather garments. The child workers who
work in these industrial units belong to an age
group of eight to 16 and many of them are paid as little as Rs100 per week
when they start work. These children often work as assistants to adult
workers and learn the art of stretching leather gloves. When get experience
in the stretching of leather garments, they are paid
up to Rs400 to Rs500 per week. Most of
these children work at these industries with the consent of their
parents who believe that they would
acquire a skill and start earning
about Rs5,000 per week after becoming
supervisors.Due to extreme poverty, which is growing
everyday due to various factors including the increase
in electricity rates and price of petroleum products, many parents cannot afford to send their children to schools
to gain a formal education.
While some parents can afford paying
for their children’s education, they
still believe that it would be useless to send
their children to schools when at
the end of the day there would be no
jobs for them. The phenomenon of shifting
industrial work to residential units is relatively
new and started in earnest just a couple
of years ago. Some NGOs and
foreign importers of the products
by manufactured in the units have been demanding that no child labour should
be involved in the manufacturing process otherwise they would not place
orders. To get their businesses camouflaged, some industrialists simply their units
to less visible residential units. Besides leather garments
some textile-based small industries have also been shifted to Bilal Colony
and other residential units of KIA including Mehran Town, Sharifabad and
others where different hosiery items are prepared. Most of children who work
at these small textile units do cropping
work of hosiery items. They cut the extra threads on the towels and other
items and give a finishing touch to the products which are
later packed for selling. Generally, all the family members,
including the women and the children, participate in the industrial
activity and they are paid Rs15 to Rs30 for
every 100 items. The hard labour provided
the entire day generally adds up
to Rs200 for the entire family in this field.
Ibrahim Hyderi, which is
situated near Korangi Crossing, is a
place where thousands of children both
male and famale are engaged
in manufacturing carpets. According to an
estimate, some 200 families, mostly Bengalis, are engaged in this business
with their teenager children.This specific industry prefers to employ children
from the age of 10 to 14 to manufacture the carpets to get higher
rates for the finished products in the
international market. The smaller fingers which the kids have ensure
a better finish for
the carpets which have a higher
demand and sell at higher rates. Mostly these children are ‘bought’ on an
annual basis and their families are paid Rs10,000 for a year of the ‘forced
labour’ in advance.The industrialists promise
the families of free accommodation and a free meal when the deal
to hire the services of
these adolescent workers is being finalised. All such activity is being
carried out under
the nose of the Labour Department which is
responsible to check and control such
illegal activities. Deputy General
Secretary of the National Trade Union Federation Nasir Mansoor said
it is a tragedy that the formal
sector is being speedily converted into the informal sector in Pakistan. He
said according to some reliable surveys, 60 percent of the total workforce
works for the informal sector in the country. He said in the
informal sector, all the family members, including the children,
provide labour but these
workers are not even considered as workers.Mansoor said that an adult
labourer may demand his due rights from his employer but there is no as such
threat for the industrialists when they hire children as workers. He said the
International Labour Organisation (ILO) had passed its Child
Protection Bill three years ago but such practises
in Pakistan continue to go unchecked. He said the Child Cell of the Labour
Department of Sindh is also responsible for
providing protection to children
engaged in industrial labour.He said illegal immigrant workers can always be
more easily harassed and they can be forced to work irrespective of age
or wages in the industrial sector.
There
is a lot of talk about male street children whose number is growing by the day in the metropolis but fewer people talk about teen aged girls
who happen to run away from their homes due to numerous reasons. One
can observe thousands of adolescent male kids scattered around the
city who live in
groups on the
streets for their survival. However, teen aged girls are rarely seen
on the streets although a large number of such girls also run away from homes due to a variety of reasons ranging from domestic
violence, to forced marriages
to a search of more
‘glamorous’ lives which
they cannot find in
their homes due to their
poverty-stricken backgrounds.Once these girls commit ‘the sin’ of running
away from their homes they soon reach a point of no return and finally
‘disappear’ for good. There
is no reliable data on how many girls have
left home and how many of them have taken refuge at some shelter
homes. However, one thing that they have
in common is that they don’t live on the streets like male street children.
Initially, such young girls
can be found
near the Cantonment station or at shrines
of saints in Karachi where they
can get two square meals. Afterwards, their whereabouts become
uncertain and they often ‘disappear’ mysteriously.
This is the fate of Guriya,
who had left her home due to frequent bouts of domestic violence. A few days
ago, 14-year-old Guriya left her home
in Muzaffargarh in southern Punjab and took a train to reach
Karachi. After reaching here, she had no idea where to go and someone told
her to take shelter at the Mazar of Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Clifton. When the volunteers of an NGO interviewed her
she told them that she had
left home as her parents used to force her to work at a place where
she was tortured again and again for no
reason. After some time when the volunteers tried to approach her
again to provide her some assistance she had disappeared from the scene. Now
nobody knows where the girl is and how she can
be traced. Sumbal is another young
girl who belongs of Karor Paka (Bahwalpur district)who also left
home due to a variety of reasons.
Fifteen-year-old Sumbal was lucky enough to be handed over to the shelter
home of a noted welfare organization. She reached Karachi in August last year
by train as someone had befriended her on the phone and had told her
that he was an officer of a high grade. This unknown person had convinced her
to come to Karachi so that they could start a new life together.She reached
Cantonment station according to his advise but she was left bewildered when
did not find him at the station. The Madadgar at the railway
police also made an entry of this case and finally she was handed over to the
shelter home. Often, young persons leave
their home alone to for the sake of adventure and to explore the bright
lights of a big city. Some times, a number of the young members of the same
family leave their home for this purpose. Fourteen-year-old Abdul Rahman,
12-year-old Sarfraz and 13-year-old
Jafar are brothers belonging to a Burmese family and who live in the
street on Shah Jalal Chowk in Machhar Colony.These children left their home
some six years ago because they suffered frequent bouts of violence on the
part of their father. They never went to school
due to the extremely poor background of their family and their mother is the
sole bread earner of a
large household. She works in the prawn cleaning industry while her husband
does nothing to earn a livelihood. There is just one thing which he does
regularly and that is to bea this wife almost every day over petty issues.The
three brothers got fed up with this domestic violence and one day they
decided to run away from home with the streets of the metropolis their
ultimate destinations. Abdul Rahman and Sarfraz
live together at Daupota Road whereas Jafar prefers to live on the streets of
Clifton where he makes a living by being a commercial sex worker.Both Abdul
Rahman and Sarfraz are good at painting and drawing but it is obviously not
too helpful a skill for earning a livelihood. Sarfraz has found shelter
in drugs to get rid of the harshness of his life and one can observe him on
most days in a state of intoxication intoxicated achieved by sniffing Samad
Bond to drown his sorrows. According to President of
Initiator Human Development Foundation, Rana Asif Habib, all these young kids
are victims not only of domestic violence and poverty but also of global
progress. He said the glitz and glamour portrayed in TV dramas often provokes
some impressionable young children to
explore adventures outside of their poverty stricken homes.He said besides
large number of young boys, young girls also escape from their homes due to
various reasons but unfortunately their cases go unchecked. He adds that generally the
runaway cases of young girls are not even reported to the police to avoid
family embarrassment.He claimed many such boys eventually adopt the
philosophy of ‘survival of the fittest’ but girls cannot do this due to
their socialisation and societal taboos. He believes NGOs should
focus more attention
on cases of runaway girls as well so that some measures could be taken
to address this vital issue as well. —
By Qadeer Tanoli |
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