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Toronto
Star,
INSIGHT
Friday, March 14, 1997
Being the
children of immigrants, my kids can draw from our
"Canadian" experience combined with our experiences
from the land of our birth. I believe this enriches us as a
family and gives us a bird's eye view of life and its problems.
For example, on a
recent visit to my native Pakistan, the kids (they are 11 and
13) bombarded me with questions because they see most things
differently from me.
The boys were
touched by the extreme poverty they saw, but what disturbed them
most was seeing children toiling to earn money. Almost
everywhere we went, homes and public places, they saw kids, some
their own age, at work.
"Is this
child labor and isn't it wrong?" my older son asked me. He
has been following stories about child abuse and child labor.
Like other Canadians, he is specially taken up with the efforts
of Craig Kielburger, the 14-year-old Thornhill boy famous for
his crusade against child labor. And Pakistan was particularly
in the limelight when Iqbal Masih, a young Pakistani boy also
crusading against child labor, was murdered.
I answered my son
by explaining about life in Third World countries where child
labor is common. The general public is not literate and birth
rates are high, resulting in large families. In rural areas,
poor folks do farming and involve the entire family in helping
with
the chores.
But in urban
areas like Karachi, the basic survival of a destitute family
hinges very often on the children finding work. If kids don't
work, the boys are picked up by gangs who deal in drugs or force
them to beg on the street and the girls are forced into
prostitution.
My sons noted
that poverty in Pakistan is very different from that they have
seen in the West. They saw masses of people who have no food, no
clean water, no clothes and no place to live, who survive under
the sky and on handouts.
I explained to my
shattered kids that in a perfect world, we would never want our
children to work. However, life is nowhere near perfect. When
the heartrending reality is bare survival, poor families do
whatever it takes to simply get a decent meal. A roof over their
heads and decent clothes to wear are counted among luxuries they
can't afford.
In answer to my
kids' questions about why the children are not at school, I told
them education in Pakistan is not free. Before poor parents can
think of sending their kids to school, they must provide food,
clothes and school fees. Education becomes low priority for
the
starving.
This is not to
condone forcible child labor or harsh conditions. Such things
have to be condemned and stopped. But they are not
the norm.
Child abuse and
child labor are separate issues. A working child is not
necessarily an abused child. My kids saw for themselves that
most of the children working as domestics were well-dressed,
well-treated and well-fed. They are under the protection of
their employers and are better cared for than if they remained
in their dwellings
in the slums.
While it's easy
to sit in the comfort of our heated homes and talk about
changing the "other" world, it's also important to
examine the root cause underlying issues like child labor. Our
trip to Pakistan taught my children that.
Copyright
© 1997 Toronto Star, All Rights Reserved.
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