All those innocent faces are lost in the search for a livelihood. They were meant to be catching butterflies. They were meant to be in the gardens.
You will have spent your childhood amid happiness, springtimes and bright colours. Even today you probably remember those lovely childhood days and think: if only that same childhood, those pleasures of life, could come back. But close to you there is a settlement, a society, where there are children but no childhood. You will have spent your childhood playing with toys, but at this tender age these children, forced by circumstances, have to go out onto the road to work, with tools in their hands instead of toys and books. They have neither a roof over their heads nor any support. The responsibilities of the whole family fall on them in childhood. They have no place to live, and they spend their entire childhood in the filth of the street. For these children there is no Eid, no happiness, no festival. How much pain these young children must feel when, at the age for playing and running about, their hands are covered in blisters from hard labour.
Children are the future and the asset of any country. But in the days when they should be laughing and playing, they are put to work so that the household can keep going and they can get two meals a day. At the age for going to school, these innocent flowers are set to labour in hotels, on buses, in tea houses, markets, shops or workshops. You will have seen countless flowers of the garden left to wither in heaps of rubbish. Nobody offers support to the children who live in the streets. They earn for themselves to fill their stomachs, and they live their lives sleeping on the same road. Some poor families leave their children on the roads, and these innocent children beg to support their families while spending their own lives on the road.
Street children have become a global problem. According to one survey, there are around 150 million of them worldwide, but the real number is far higher. Street children are a social challenge. The main causes of their spread are poverty, famine, inflation, urbanisation, unemployment and government neglect. This bloodthirsty society, this cruel social order, crushes them with hunger and hardship, because food is as essential for living as water and breath.
Like other developing countries, Pakistan also faces the problem of street children. According to reports by international organisations, in Pakistan:
about 33 per cent of children are victims of child labour. More than 12 million children here are working as child labourers, and the number is rising day by day. The main reasons are the continuous growth of the urban population and the continuous decline in sources of income. Unemployment and homelessness are already rising very fast. For this reason, when poor families suffer from food shortages, child labour and phenomena such as street children begin to flourish. This has now become a tragedy, spreading through society like a cancer.
The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. In this merciless society, these flowers face countless challenges. They are made to do hard labour in childhood, are subjected to violence over trivial matters, and become victims of sexual abuse. Their education and health are not looked after. They face all kinds of cruelty, injustice, oppression, suffering and pain, which crush these flowers. At a young age they are pushed into wrongdoing, because these innocent flowers have no guardian. The sky above is their roof and the road their bed. They are being ground in the mill of circumstance, but no one supports them or listens to their plea.
Finally, if this scourge is to be ended, society must play its part alongside the government. It is our duty to take on the responsibility of supporting the children of poor families around us. Instead of making these children do labour and hard toil, society must support them with their health, education and food. And the state is a mother, so why, with this mother present, are these flowers wandering homeless on the streets and in rubbish dumps? If these innocent flowers keep being ruined like this, the garden too will be ruined. Sadly, these buds are crushed before they can bloom.
In this connection, someone has put it well.
Until the system changes, this pain must also be endured.
The labourer's child must remain a labourer.
