Child labour is increasing rapidly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, whenever you go to Markets, Hotels, Shops or anywhere, you will see children working there, children of every age are forced to work, sometimes their parents force them to go to work and earn for them, and sometimes they themselves want to work for their homes.

According to the information received through RTI from the Human Rights Commission, the highest rate of child labour exists in Punjab province, where 1.9 million children are forced to do labour. In the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, this number is 1 million, in the province of Sindh, 298,000, while in Balochistan, the number of children is 14,000.

I met 13-year-old Palwasha in a hotel in Faisalabad, “I belong to Mansehra, and we are 8 sisters and 2 brothers, all my sisters work in homes in Lahore and Islamabad.” she said

She added that my eldest sister is 30 years old and none of the sisters is married yet. The people where my sisters and I work give my father wages every month. I don't remember when I met my sisters because we hardly get a holiday. Palwasha was still talking when she heard a voice from her owners and ran away at once.

Another boy, Mustafa, a sixth-grader in school uniform, was working in a workshop in Peshawar, lying under a car, hoping to earn some money to support his family by the evening. Asad said that my annual exams are going on and today I came to the workshop with an Urdu paper. Tomorrow is my English paper but it is not possible for me to give time to study during the day. He added that، my father is addicted to heroin, while there are three younger sisters in the house, and the mother is suffering from black jaundice. He said that in the morning he goes to school and in the afternoon comes to work here in the workshop, from where he gets two hundred to three hundred rupees a day for his family's livelihood.

Director of Labor Department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Irfanullah Khan said that for the elimination of child labour, the Labor Department has appointed inspectors who inspect child labour in the field, but due to the reduced number of inspectors, there are difficulties in ending child labour. Irfan Allah said that till now no survey has been completed regarding child labour in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to find out how many children are currently doing hard labour. Due to a lack of resources, the labour department is also unable to control child labour.

Irfanullah further said that many appeals have been made to the government to conduct a survey and enforce the law regarding child labour, but no specific response has been received so far.

Provincial Minister for Labor and culture, Shaukat Yousafzai presented the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Home Based Workers Welfare and Protection Bill 2021 in the provincial assembly to resolve the rights, duties and problems of domestic workers, and it was passed by majority vote. Under this bill, children below the age of 14 years will be banned from working at the domestic level and taking forced labour, while the appointment letter will be issued regularly for the recruitment of employees at the domestic level, including salary, payment of the procedure and nature of work shall be clearly written.

11 years old Halima from Bajure Tribal Distract is selling sweet Popcorn in Peshawar, says that I want to go to school, but I can’t afford it, because we are very poor, my father is selling sugarcane, he has no money for my school. After selling popcorn, I give money to my father, which is used for the kitchen expenses of our family.

Arshad Khan, Secretary to Government, Information and Public Relations, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa highlighted the challenges faced in the education sector. He said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has an adequate educational infrastructure in both integrated and settled districts, but the low enrollment rate and a persistently high dropout rate of about 71 million children aged 5 to 6 years in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a challenge and this role is very important to the community, especially parents and the media.

He said that more than 10,000 Afghan children are studying in different schools and the impression that they cannot be admitted to schools is wrong.

Imran Takar, associated with a non-governmental organization for the protection of children's rights, said that actually, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly had passed a law for the protection of children's rights in 2015, but the provincial government could not take steps to implement this law. However, Imran welcomed the policy to protect the rights of children and said that all the policies and measures are good on paper but the ground realities are different. He said that in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, there are no measures to protect the rights of children, especially children who are doing hard work.

Imran Takar added that in a recent report of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Department, it has been confirmed that 18 lakh children are not enrolled in educational institutions. According to him, these children either do hard labour or are street children.

He said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has not had any official survey for the past twenty years to determine how many children are engaged in child labour in the province. The previous government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf in the province had decided to conduct a house-to-house child labour survey in the province with the support of UNICEF, for which the provincial government had allocated Rs.150 Million. UNICEF had to provide tablets for this survey. According to the plan, the survey was to be completed by December 2018, but due to the non-receipt of NOC from the security agencies for the use of tablets, this survey could not be completed to date. He added that the Department of Labor has written several letters to the Provincial Ministry of Home Affairs on the issue of NOC, but the Provincial Ministry of Home Affairs has not given any response to these letters.

I met Asad at the bank of River Kabul near Sardaryab Charsadda, he was cleaning the fish and putting them in a basket and for this work he was getting three hundred rupees per day. This 12-year-old child said that his father is sick and his elder brother is disabled and the responsibility of running the house is on him. "You have to give money in the house, you have to run the house, you have younger siblings in the house, you have to feed everyone, you have to come under pressure"۔ he added.

He said that earlier catching the fish with a net was difficult for him, but now it has become a habit، so it doesn't sound so dangerous. "Now I know swimming. Just when it gets cold on the river, I get flu, that's why I sometimes get sick."

Ijaz Muhammad Khan, Acting Chief KP Child Protection and Welfare Commission expressed his observations on the child protection system in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and said that the commission is effective in monitoring and coordinating child rights issues at the provincial and local levels.

He said that child protection units have been established in different districts of the province.

He also highlighted that helpline 1121 is functioning where children and people can register their complaints. Child Protection Committees with referral mechanisms and networks have been formed in all districts.

Social activist Mah Noor Shakeel, who has been working on child labour in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the last 10 years, says that officials from the relevant departments should closely monitor shops, kilns, markets and hotels to ensure the eradication of child labour. “All possible measures should be taken for the welfare of the workers and they should be fully compensated for their labour so that child labour is minimized.”

She added that poverty is the main reason for the use of child labour in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Most families in KP are living below the poverty line, leaving parents with no choice but to send their children to work to increase the family income. The ever-increasing inflation affects the poor and backward sections of society the most and these innocent children put their lives and future at stake to feed their families at this young age.

Spogme Bebe, a mother who has sent her 3 daughters from Swat to Peshawar for work, says that when she sees the girls in her neighbourhood going to school, and the children of their owners in the homes where she works, her heart is tempted by modern toys and expensive clothes, but she cannot provide these things to her children. "I bury all my desires, feelings and perceptions here, because I and my children are aware of our duty. And we know our limits which we cannot cross under any circumstances."

KP Additional IGP Operations Muhammad Ali Babakhel highlighted the role of police in handling child protection issues in the province. He shared the details of police officers listed in the KP Police Act 2017 and said that KP is the only province in Pakistan which has its own police act. He said that according to Section 2 (a) of the KP Police Act, 2017, police officers should make all efforts to help people in distress, especially women and children. He also said that in 2022 the police in KP registered a total of 265 cases of child rape and 4 cases of child rape with murder.

He also informed that a total of 283 cases of juvenile offenders have been registered in KP province. He emphasized the urgent need to tackle the issue of cybercrime against children.

Child labor has become a major problem all over the world but it has increased to alarming levels in third world countries like Pakistan. This international problem is intensifying with each passing day as a large number of children are forced to work which is completely against the law.

According to UNICEF, around 158 million children between the ages of 5 and 15 are working as child labourers worldwide, while in Pakistan, around 3.3 million children are working as child labourers. These children work in various industries in some hotels and workshops.

According to Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), an organization working for the protection of children's rights in Pakistan, about 12 million children are forced to do hard labour across the country. Among them, 6 million children are less than 10 years of age. The number of such Pakistani children cannot be accurately estimated because the official data available was collected 18 years ago. That is, the last time the survey was conducted at the official level was in 1996. According to these ancient data, out of 40 million children in the country, approximately 3.3 million children were forced into labour. 73% of them were boys and 27% were girls.

The highest incidence of child labour was found in Punjab province, where 1.9 million children fell into the category of child labour. In the Frontier Province (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), this number was one million, in the province of Sindh, 298,000, while in Balochistan, the number of children was 14,000.

Jahanzeb Khan, Provincial Head of SPARC said that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has enacted legislation regarding child labour and has also started the 'Zamong Kaur' (Our Home), for homeless children. According to the laws related to children's rights are not being implemented due to which child labour is increasing day by day. He said that 20 million children across Pakistan are still out of school due to poverty and war-torn conditions.

According to a 2018 announcement by the Labor Department of the provincial government of KP, the policy to prevent child labor is to establish a system at the central level that in collaboration with other departments, will not only help ensure the elimination of child labour, but under this system children from 5 to 16 years of age will be provided with free education and technical training as well as medical aid and treatment facilities, but the provincial government has not been able to take steps to implement this law. Even if facilities were provided, the number of child labourers could not decrease, it has continued to increase.

Not just Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but Pakistan is on the verge of achieving the SGD target of 8.7, facing the enormous challenge of getting the world back on track, including ending all child labour by 2025, while the number of child labourers in Pakistan is increasing rapidly.