Published on: 15 March 2024
DOHI NEWS
Today, one-in-four households in Pakistan employs a child in domestic service. Most of these children are girls, between the ages of 10 and 14 years of age, who come from underprivileged families – including from the Christian religious minority community.
According to Naveed Walter, president of Human Rights Focus Pakistan, “Domestic workers, particularly housemaids, suffer all sorts of physical, sexual, psychological, and verbal abuse in Pakistan. However, minors, working as domestic helpers to the rich, are the easiest targets of abuse.”
Oftentimes, these desperately poor parents “sell” their children to a rich employer for a monthly wage of $34 to $50 a month. Though children, these young domestic servants are expected to clean, iron, babysit, and the list goes on, be on 24-hour call and take only one to two days break per month. We would call this slavery in the West.
In 2020, the story of 8-year-old Zohra Shah shocked us. The young girl had been brought to a hospital in Rawalpindi unconscious and in critical condition. When doctors looked her over, they found that she had cut marks on her arms and legs, scratch marks and bruises on her torso, and most appalling of all, torture marks on her private parts.
Once the police got involved, it became clear that the child’s injuries were the result of an extreme beating she had received from her employers Hassan Siddique, an exotic bird breeder, and his wife, Umme Kulsoom. The couple had beaten Zohra because she had accidentally released some of Hassan’s expensive parrots.
In hospital, Zohra struggled to survive, eventually giving in to her injuries. Officials stated that the abuse the child had suffered had been long term since her body was covered in older scars and marks.
Due to this case, child labor was banned in Pakistan in 2020. Sadly, not much has changed in the country as seen by the 2023 case of Rizwana, a 14-year-old housemaid, who went to hospital with multiple head injuries, bone fractures, and suffering from sepsis. Her injuries were the result of six months of repeated abuse and torture by her employers, Somia Asism and civil judge Asim Hafeez in Islamabad.
Let us pray for the 12 million children across Pakistan who, rather than going to school and playing safely at home, continue to be placed in dangerous work environments by their families or others looking to make money off of their labor.
