Child labour in Pakistan on the rise a year after devastating floods - Asia, World The 2010 monsoon floods submerged Pakistan on an unprecedented scale, with 10 years' worth of rain falling in the space of a week. Two thousand people were killed and another 20 million affected. Two million homes and 10,000 schools were destroyed. In a report released today, the UK-based charity Save the Children warns that the number of children forced to work has risen by up to a third in areas worst hit by the floods. "A year on from the floods and many of the children caught up in the disaster are struggling to survive," said David Wright, Save the Children's country director for Pakistan. The spike in child labour comes as families have watched their incomes fall by up to 70 per cent over the past year, the report said, drawing on a survey of over 2,300 households in the worst flood-affected areas. With incomes at perilous lows, the 10 million children in flood-affected areas are also being denied the food they need to survive. "Pakistan needs to act now.
Capital Corruption: Child Labour fuelling Black Money - Views Updated: Sat, Sep 10 2011. 12 11 AM IST Civil society campaigns revolving around corruption and black money have not only eclipsed many fundamental issues confronting the common people of the country, but have also become so emotional that pertinent aspects of the genesis of these evils have been largely ignored. Illegal employment of children has emerged as a huge source of illicit earnings and corruption. According to the Census of India 2001, 12.7 million children were working in various sectors across the country while non-government organizations estimate the number of child labourers at 60 million, nearly 6% of the total population of India. All the work that is done by child labourers and the income thus generated goes unaccounted for. Studies show that these 60 million children work for approximately 200 days a year at an average cost of Rs 15 per child per day. This straight profit of Rs 1.2 trillion is a significant loss to the economy.
B.C.’s child labour laws are the most neglectful in the world I live in Vancouver, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Surrounded by mountains and ocean, the city is a paradise of beaches and gardens, parks and yoga studios, a hub of green ideas, progressive politics and entertainment industry glitter. But there’s a dark underside. Vancouver is in a province that has the most astonishingly neglectful child labour laws in North America, indeed in the world. The introduction of this regime by a Liberal government in 2004 – before which the minimum work age was 15 – has substantially increased the number of children working in the province. Business tends to favour permissive child labour laws (likely the reason B.C. said its new law would help make the province more “economically competitive”). None of this makes child labour right. B.C.’s regime belies any belief that child labour is solely a problem of the developing world. But child labour can be eliminated.