Global trend in Child labor

Global trend is to wean away children from labor and impart compulsory education to them. Till recently law prohibits child labor in factories but not in cottage industry, family households, eating places or in agriculture. Doesn’t it sound foolish? Poverty invariably comes in the way of education and that too only in Pakistan. In other countries, even poorer than Pakistan, poverty is not allowed to stand in the way of expanding mass education or making primary education compulsory. It proves that our priorities lie somewhere else. Why can’t Pakistan adopt the policy of compulsory primary education and go in for legislation to abolish child labor in Toto?

It is puzzling. We have not followed the provisions of our cherished Constitution religiously which call for compulsory education and ban on child labor. We have framed rules but they are never executed sincerely and they exist merely as official statutes. Moreover, we are victims of ill-placed priorities. Pakistan spends 2.1% of its GNP on education that is primary one and more on higher education knowing very well that only one or one and a half percent of young men and women attend institutions of higher learning.