No institution in Pakistan is ready to conduct a fresh child labour survey even as the last survey was done 20 years ago.
Speakers at a seminar on Friday said that children sensitive social protection policies were needed in the country to eradicate child labour, Dawn News reported on Saturday.
The seminar titled "A child employed is a future destroyed" was organised in the port city Karachi for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), by the Child Rights Movement (CRM) and Sindh labour ministry.
According to officials, Pakistan faced the "worst" form of child labour where workers were subjected to physical and mental torture.
There should be zero tolerance for child labour with a national policy against it, they suggested.
They said the Employment of Children Act 1991 was abolished after the 18th amendment. The labour ministry should adopt and move the provincial draft of Employment of Children Act Sindh for further process.
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In Pakistan, 25 million children have never been to a school out of which 15 million were earning for their families through various forms of manual labour.
A senior official in the labour ministry said the ministry was drafting a strategy to conduct a child labour survey.
--IANS
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