Amid the coronavirus scare, May Day was observed with little fanfare across the globe. This day commemorates the international labour movement, pays tribute to workers’ sacrifices in achieving economic and social rights all over the world, and in the memory of those who laid down their lives in Chicago, USA, in 1886 for labour rights.

The UN strives to protect child rights, to abolish child labour, exploitation and abuse, whether they flood-affected little folks of Jhando Marri or Tando Hafiz, Pakistan, or be they poor, hungry and sick street children of Bangladesh, Afghanistan or Nigeria; whether physically, mentally and socially suffering kids of Bolivia, Gaza and Syria.

Accepting that children have rights and giving them rights are two different stories. Here are just a few of the countless absorbing, revealing and thought-provoking examples of violation of child rights in the streets of Pakistan: We see children dragging old cart-pushers in the tight and grubby lanes of Hyderabad; adolescent car cleaners at Jinnah Super Market, Islamabad; sweating little ones helping in street stalls in Lee Market, Karachi; walking tea and ‘qahva’ vendors of downtown Quetta; loading round-the-clock ‘porters’ at the bustling railway junction, Lahore; labourers of Chowk Yadgar and Qissa Khawani, Peshawar; carving, printing and engraving folks of the cottage industry of Pakistan; toiling long for meagre livelihood housemaids or ‘maasis’ of the nation.

While men at the helm of affairs and men of letters merely conceptualise and sermonise May Day for the cause of labourers, the teeming majority of our labourers continue to undergo agonising times and exploitative pressure of labouring long and tedious hours for negligible return.

It is startling that the delightful craftsmanship of our artisans, despite being second to none in the world, and the magical fingers of our cute little children of Sialkot, in spite of producing the best sports goods of the world, are merely exploited: dubbed, projected and labelled as child labour.

There is a need for both the private and public sectors to work together to enable these children to gain education and be trained on-the-job for a better of quality of life. It is time to deliver practically than by lip-service on May Day.

Concerned experts and authorities need sit together, put their heads down and work honestly for the noble cause of dignity of labour for all.

Published in Dawn, Young World, May 2nd, 2020