Public awareness imperative to eliminate child labour : Sumsam

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ISLAMABAD, Mar 3 (APP): Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Sumsam Ali Shah Bukhari Tuesday said the government was not oblivious of child labour issue as it was striving to achieve national development targets to stand on equal footings with the developed states.
He said this while addressing a closing session of one-day capacity-building workshop entitled “Elimination of Child Labour and Role of Media” which was organised here by International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting under the national media plan of action to sensitize the mediapersons about the child labour issues in the country.

The Minister linked this issue mainly to the lack of public awareness about the importance of health and education of children in the nation building effort and said media has an important role to play in highlighting the child labour issue and extending cooperation by floating suggestions to control this menace.

The Minister also emphasized joint public-private collaboration and endeavours to eliminate this menace from the society.

He also highlighted the reasons of child labour and said there was a need to aware public about the importance of health and education. The other reason is that the business people prefers child labour to minimize their routine expenditure, he added.

Sumsam expressed his pleasure in hosting the workshop and thanked the delegates for their commitment and active participation in the deliberations of the workshop.

He expressed his ministry’s full-fledged support to all efforts in the country for the elimination of child labour.

The Minister said the exploitative system of child labour is a bane which deprives the children of the realization of their full potential for growth into useful and productive members of the society.