The problem of child labor has many faces in Pakistan, as in any other developing country of the world. It can be seen in the faces of children in any workshop, informal set up or brick factory, doing hazardous work. It can be seen in the faces of children in Pakistan’s rural areas, suffering permanent physical deformities from making carpets. It can be seen in the faces of children in clandestine factories, forced to do dangerous work for 12 hours a day. Millions of children in the age group five to 18 years are working in the country. Most of them work in varied conditions involved in a wide range of manufacturing processes, which are often hazardous and difficult to access.

Official figures released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) in September 1996 placed the number of child workers in Pakistan at approximately 3.3 million. Officially children make up about 7% of the total workforce. However, government statistics omit children who are working in family and small businesses that are not registered with the government.

SPARC believes these official figures to be unrealistically low. With at least 23 million children of school-going age not attending school, the actual number of child laborers must be higher than suggested by official figures.

In 2003, UNICEF estimated that eight million children under the age of 14 are engaged as laborers (in brick kiln factories, the carpet weaving industry, agriculture, small industries, and domestic services, etc).

The official figures were released more than eight years ago. A new survey to find out the latest magnitude of this problem in Pakistan is long overdue. Without more recent figures, it is impossible for the government and other stakeholders working to eliminate child labor to determine what impact their programs and interventions have had, if any, and to plan future interventions on a scale appropriate to the number of children affected (for more details see government initiatives).

According to the FBS survey, about 73% (2.5 million) of working children are boys and 27% (950,000) are girls. About 2.1 million are between 10-14 years, and the rest are between five and nine years.

The survey concludes that more than 2.9 million children work in rural and 400,000 in urban areas, making the number of working children in rural areas more than seven times that of urban areas. About 60% (1.94 million) of working children are found in the Punjab, followed by NWFP with 1.06 million young workers, Sindh with 298,000 and Balochistan with 14,000 child workers, the survey report says. The survey found that about 71% of the total working children are engaged in agriculture, sales and services, mining, construction, manufacturing, domestic service and transport sectors. About 46% of the children work more than 35 hours a week, while 13% work more than 56 hours a week. Seven percent suffer frequent illness and injuries.

Child Domestic Workers

Perhaps the most invisible and difficult to access are domestic child workers, who are often girls. This is sometimes also called the “hidden sector”, and can involve coercive recruiting methods and abuse, particularly sexual exploitation. Another category of working children that is difficult to access and equally vulnerable to abuse despite being highly visible is street children.

Domestic child labor is a hidden labor, taking place behind closed doors. Due to its unseen nature, it is difficult to monitor or regulate the types of tasks the children are performing or their working conditions and treatment. These children are unprotected, exploited and at extreme risk with no approach to social or legal help.

Domestic child laborers are victims of various kinds of abuses including physical, mental, verbal and sexual abuse. In many cases the term “child domestic workers” is misleading as it refers to children who, instead of starting each day in the school are getting up when it is still dark and toiling until night in slave-like conditions. This is not a legitimate employment. And this is not a childhood that any girl or boy should have to endure.

It is increasingly common in Pakistan for employers to accuse child domestic workers of theft and then cut their pay until the amount is recovered, exploiting them as bonded labor in a form of modern day slavery. Sometimes the children are forcefully prevented from leaving their employer’s house until the debt or stolen money is repaid.