School Enrollment Campaign for Brick Kıln Children

By:Abu Danish,Bahawalpur

Punjab Labour & HR Department, in collaboration with Education and Literacy Departments is successfuly moving ahead to enroll all the out of school children of brick kiln workers of the province under School Enrollment Campaign for Brick Kıln Children,  launched this August. Punjab government has initiated different educational and rehabilitation programmes to improve the living standards of brick kiln workers by imparting education to thier children and supporting workers financially as well.

                   This was stated by Provincial Minister for Labor & HR Raja Ashfaq Sarwar in a meeting, held here today to review the pace of progress of School Enrollment Campaign. Secretary Labor Ali Sarfaraz, Project Director Dr. Javed Gill, District Officer Labor Lahore Hasnaat Javed, Deputy Director Dawood Abdullah and other concerned officers attended the meeting. The meeting was informed that under this campaign, around 1566 out of school children of brick kiln workers from Faisalabad, 715 from Lahore, 268 from Nankana Sahib, 937 from Gujrat, 187 from Chiniot while more than 15 children of brick kiln workers from Rahim Yar Khan have been enrolled in government school under the radius of 2km from thier brick kilns. However, all the EDOs, DDOs, Headmasters, teachers and other educational staff of the Education Department are presently busy in preparation of local bodies elections. The enrollment campaign will boost up after holding of local bodies elections. International Labour Organization, districts administration, Literacy, Local Government, Social Welfare, Community Development, Home, PEF and other related departments are co-partners of Labor Department in this enrollment campaign.  The meeting was informed that more than 5592 children of brick kiln workers of 4 selected districts of the province are already being imparted non-formal education by Labor Department under EBLIK (Elimination Of Bounded Labour In Brick Kilns) Project. According to the details, 1003 children in Gujrat, 1566 in Faisalabad, 1538 in Sargodha while 1485 children in Bahawalpur are being imparted free education through this project. Minister Labor Raja Ashfaq Sarwar said that it is an honor for the Labour Department as it has completed, for the first time in the history of the country, a comprehensive survey of all the brick kilns of the province with its own limited resources. According to the survey there are 170293 brick kiln workers at 6000 brick kilns in the province while their 7540 children are given free education through different educational schemes of the Labor Department. The Labor Department is also planning to initiate a comprehensive survey of child labour in 10 selected districts of the Punjab through Board of Statistics (BoS) to identify the actual figure of bonded and child labor for its early elimination