Growing up in Karachi in the 1990s and attending a Western-style elitist school, we were put out of the realities of our country and made to look at many issues from a Western perspective. Child labor was one of them.
There were a lot of articles and documentaries distributed around my school by students and others along with pictures with messages against child labor. These people live in a dream world. They fail to rationalize on how these poor children's basic needs would be taken care of with them out of work.
Where will they get money to pay for food and drink if they are only at school?
How will they support their families especially if their parents are handicapped/disabled and unable to work themselves?
If adults are in the labor force and work full time in this field, what is the purpose of them wasting their early life at school, when it will not make a difference or be of much use in their career?
I am no advocate of giving children labor jobs where they are required to put too many hours or energy into labor knowing this can be a hazard to their health in the long term. Neither do I advocate unsafe jobs that can cause injuries or even death.
As long as the jobs done by children are simple and painless, I don't see any other solution that will keep them out of poverty.
I've seen children working as household servants or gardening and similar painless jobs.
I know for sure that if I were a poor child in Pakistan I would prefer to work instead of sitting at home wondering if my parent(s)/guardians made enough money to buy us food and drink.
I would prefer to work as a household servant knowing I can pay for my basic needs instead of begging on the streets hoping that someone with generosity will give me enough money.
Opponents of child labor in Pakistan are completely out of touch with the realities of their country and don't seem to offer any solutions on what they see as a key problem in their society.
As our country continues to suffer from an overpopulation crisis we cannot expect the conditions of our people to improve, only worsen.
In other third world countries there are other reasons for child labor such as political instability or poor infrastructure to maintain a decent society. But in the case of Pakistan it is overpopulation.
When there are too many children per household, people have no choice but to work to survive in order to feed all the hungry mouths. Instead of wasting their minds on child labor problems, our elite class needs to come up with solutions to our overpopulation crisis which will solve most of our other problems including child labor which they seem to be so against.
