By Zahiruddin
CHITRAL: Child labour is found to be highly pervasive among the nomadic people settled in the south of Chitral where a child starts tending cattle after hardly attaining the age of six years which is their sole source of sustenance.
An official of a poverty reduction project carried out by a non-governmental organization in Lower Chitral told this scribe that forming about 15 percent of the total population of Chitral, the Gujar tribe wandered from place to place in search of food for their cattle throughout the year who inherited no landed property anywhere.
He said that due to the transient nature of the people, the enrolment rate of the children was recorded as naught which is aggravated by the ignorance prevalent in the people who did not care for the future of their coming generation.
The official said that his organization faced stiff resistance when it came out with a package wherein they were offered free education to their children by admitting them in the schools of public sector while the parents were further offered a petty amount of money in lieu of it.
A former general councilor from Sheshi Koh area, of the valleys of the nomadic people, Waris Khan told this scribe that these people depended solely on the livestock keeping as they sold their goats in the market to purchase the commodities of their daily consumption including medicines.
He said that a child starts lending help to his or her parents rights from the age of six and this is the only option as they keeping on changing their abode with changing of seasons due to which they cannot be enrolled in a school which will make them stay there throughout the year.
Mr. Khan said that an another aspect of the situation is that the nomadic people find no other profession or occupation other than livestock keeping as they have no land for agriculture and no capital to start business.
“The children of school going age among the nomadic people can be seen to have taken over the job of grazing their cattle from their parents and this will go on in the same way in the times to come”, he said in despair.
He said, however, that many affluent people in the clan of nomads have started sending their children to schools and even colleges although their number is very limited but they have established the trend of educating their children which the other are going to imitate.