Child labour

Child labour famously described as “an ugly face of a civilized society” is a big
curse to any nation. Child labour means employment of children. Children are usually
hired by small factories and organization because they can be forced to do more
work for less salary. Usually it’s the children from poor families who have to suffer
from this curse as their parents force them to work or sometimes them self opt to
work to support the family financially. In both the cases the childhood and the
future the children are destroyed as he work all day long and have no time to go to
school, study and learn nor they have time to play, make new friends and enjoy
their childhood. Taking away both of these will have a terrible effect on the
children’s health and mental ability. In a childhood children learn to interact with
one another by making new friends which is very important so a child do not
become socially inactive, and in future do not have any problem in interacting with
others. Similarly by taking away education the children will never be able to attain
any professional job and will be left to work as the lowest level employees with
little salaries. Child labour is a major issue in Pakistan and India as the rate of
child labor in these countries is very high.

The most important drawback of child labour is lack of education. Children only
study until up to grade five or six and then their family feels that they can now
work and add to the family earnings so they are unwilling pulled out of schools and
are labored in some small factories or in any other private jobs. The age when
these children were supposed to be learning English, science, history instead are
working and involved in making products to sell or are fixing cars ect. He gets no
education and will never become a civilized member of a society. He will be
restricted to a low salary job for life as he doesn’t have the necessary degree nor
the technical skills for a job of higher level. Because of this he cannot improve his
life style and living standards, thus his children will be obliged to live the same life
style as he lived. When financial problems will occur he will also use his children as
a financial source as he was used by his family, and so the cycle goes on. Children
who miss out on education are 60% girls as the parents think that their studying is
useless as they will get married in the end and leave us and will not support us
financially. So instead of sending them to school they learn sewing clothes and a
few household activities and are tend to earn from that and provide money to their
family.

Another important drawback of child labour is missing out of our childhood as it is

a very important stage of our development. In our childhood we acquire some very
important qualities that help us throughout our life. In our childhood when we go
out make new friends and socialize, we are developing strengths to interact with
one another. If this is taken away from him he becomes a victim of anxiety, he will
have trouble in public speaking and interacting with others. This will become a
great problem for the child in future as when he will become independent he will
have to deal with all of his problems himself by interacting with others personally.
The child will also miss out on his physical activities which will affect his health. As
working will be a burden on him so it will affect him physically and mentally. He may
become a patient of depression at such a small age. Taking away these two things
(childhood and education) would be considered as child abuse, as for me these are
the two most important promises to a child.

Parents who engage their children in child labour argue in the favor of it saying
that it is better because it proves to be an extra source of income while if they
spend money of their education it will only be an extra expense. Another point they
come up with is that in today’s world even if u study you will not able to get a good
job so it’s better to start working at a smaller age so that when you grow up you
will be more experienced in the particular job you have been engaged in and will be
able to earn enough from that job to support your family. I strongly disagree with
these points because by this we are destroying the children’s future, his dreams of
becoming a doctor or an engineer are being shattered and is unwilling working as a
plumber or something in the same manner. He will never be able to improve his life
style and become a civilized member of the society. He will never be able to
become something big.