1979, child labor slaves in Pakistan

The UN warned in a report published this Thursday, June 10 against the upsurge in child labor due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 1979, a “New Friday” report on FR3 testified to the work of very young children in the carpet factories of Pakistan.

It is a report jointly written by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Unicef, the United Nations (UN) agency responsible for children, and published this Thursday, June 10, which warns against the increase in child labor around the world due to the crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. The report points to the very high risk that millions of children will be pushed into labor, as the first increases in child labor have been recorded, a first in two decades.

The report estimates that, at the start of 2020, 160 million children were forced to work – 8.4 million more in four years.

Child labor, banned globally in the UNICEF Children’s Bill of Rights (1989), has long been a sad reality in poor countries around the world. In 1979, a FR3 report testified to the harsh working conditions of two young boys, Saïd and Waïd, aged 11 and 13, respectively, in a carpet factory in Lahore, Pakistan.

The working day started at 6 a.m. In the workshop, under the supervision of a few mostly inactive adults, the little hands of the thirty or so young boys wriggled on the looms. Their fingers, more agile and faster than those of adults in weaving rugs, could tie up to 10,000 woolen threads per day.

This hard work was seen as an opportunity by the children and their families. In a poor country with very few prospects for its youth, working in the carpet industry was one way to help support the family. These children, along with hundreds of thousands of others across the country, made Pakistan the world’s 4th largest carpet exporter.

An official of the trade union explained that in a country with 80% illiterate, the “Most parents cannot afford to send children to school“, adding that in the carpet factories, these children”became useful citizens“.

In the evening, the exhausted children dreamed of another life, in Saudi Arabia or in Germany. A life where they will have to start all over again, but without going through the hard work of the loom.