Wednesday 17 October 2012
Last Update 17 October 2012 1:54 am
According to media reports, Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head at point-blank range by the Taleban, has reached the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, the United Kingdom. The hospital is among the newest in Britain, and specializes in dealing with gunshot and head injuries, providing specialist care to members of the UK armed forces.
The government of Pakistan must be commended for its efforts to send this young girl to the UK for better treatment.
Now people of Pakistan are looking up to the government to play a similar role in providing better facilities to thousands of other children like Malala. According to human rights organizations due to the weak labor laws child labor is growing at an alarming rate in the country.
Because of bad economic conditions of their families, thousands of children are being forced into hazardous jobs. Only a month ago several infants lost their lives in the Children’s Hospital in Larkana due to long hours of power outage and non-availability of oxygen cylinders in the hospital’s emergency ward. Larkana is the birthplace of ruling party’s founder Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Only weeks ago several children were burned to death in Karachi garment factory fire incident. According to government’s own statistics 90 percent of the one million workers in the carpet industry are children. Two million children die each year from water-borne diseases and due to lack of toilet facilities in rural areas.
Khawaja Umer Farooq, Jeddah
0 Comments