“One who does not show mercy to our children is not from my community” [Holy Prophet (SAW)]
Kindness towards children was one of the Prophet’s special characteristics. Children are flowers of heaven and they are the beautiful creation of God.
Child labour is a terrible and big crime. In Pakistan it is an ever growing problem. According to the National child labour survey, 8-10 million children below 14 years are working as a labour in Pakistan (including both boys and girls) and Pakistan ranks number three in the world in child and forced labour. There are number of laws regarding the prohibition of Child labour but main issue is neither laws, nor government. Actually it’s our own society playing key role in the increasing rate of this crime. As we can see that most of the high class families are giving jobs to poor children at homes, including: childcare, housekeeping,washing clothes and dishes, they actually don’t know that what a terrible crime is this?
Every day we see children working in factories,hotels, agriculture and begging on roads instead of going to schools. I think it would be better to call it ‘Chlid Abuse’ in place of Child labour because most of the time they are forced into labour, it does not only ruins their innocent childhood but it also affect their physical and mental health, they are at greater risk of malnutrition, depression and drugs dependency and the can see dark futures ahead.
We all consider it the cause of poverty, illiteracy, non-performance of laws and so many other reasons but I think main issue is the unconsciousness of the parents. Now what we can do is that we should organize seminars and different sorts of programs about the bad consequences of child labour, to aware the poor parents who are encouraging the child labour and going against the laws and Islam and also help them out to think about their children’s education and bright futures.
Salwa Khan
Peshawar
