How Child labour is killing Pakistan
Twelve years old Sakeena was sent from the small village of Zafarwal to Lahore in the year 2010 as a live-in by her poverty-stricken parents. Her parents housed seven children and had no choice but to make the elder ones work to make both ends meet. Sakeena was a thin little girl with dark sparkling eyes full of fresh dreams. She started living in a mansion to help the mistress of the house with her children.
It was the first time she had visited a metropolis. She had no problem with carrying the shopping bags for her ‘masters’ as long as it enabled her to catch glimpses of the colorful shops adorned with flashy garments and footwear. When at home, she envied the children of the household going to school and writing strange symbols in their pretty little notebooks with pencils and pens of all sizes. But she loved their color boxes more than anything; more than their gadgets and toys. sometimes she stole shiny chocolates and nuggets out of the trays (of course she never had the luxury of eating such amazing things without having to steal them). Although at times she thought she was committing horrific crimes.
I had seen Sakeena who was standing in the rear in the photograph of my classmate Iqra. It was in 2013 when I met Iqra after a long time, and she told me that the maid they had in-home, had committed suicide a year ago. I was so shocked that I couldn’t even speak. I had never heard of a kid killing themself. She proceeded in a humorous tone that Sakeena had grown a great fondness for Indian dramas and thought that reincarnation and seven lives concept of Hindu mythology was true and used to say that If I die, I will be born a rich girl in my next life. And one day she took rat poison and died!
What made her kill herself? Did that mythology kill her? I think not. Enslavement killed her. Child labor killed her. The attitude of her ‘masters’ killed her. She lived an unnoticed life and died an unnoticed death. She was not living with an illiterate family but people who are the educated masses of our country; who were well aware of her rights. Those people who have a view that some people’s lives matter and there are some people whose lives are worthless. those people who thought that the act of her killing herself was amusing because she thought she might revive.
I don’t exactly know what happened in between those two years that she spent in that house, but it was no doubt something extremely horrible that made her take her own life. The little Sakeena was so crestfallen over her own life and living conditions. It makes me feel aggrieved that the last words she spoke before departing from this world were the wish of having a better, a ‘richer’ life. There are so many unnoticed and alive Sakeenas waiting to be rescued from the hands of such barbarians.
How many Sakeenas do you wish to save?
