Fizza, Azra and Iram’ cases were reported but there are other thousands that have gone unreported. Many young children working as house servants have been severely tortured, killed or even raped and abused by their employers but nothing is reported. In these few reported cases the chief minister Punjab has asked the provincial law minister to monitor these cases so that criminals may get exemplary punishment yet there is no law available in the country which determines and regulates the relations between house servants and their masters. The already existent labour laws governing child labour are inadequate and hard to implement.
These children of a lesser God have to work in the houses of well to do families under serious economic compulsions of their parents. This practice cannot be discontinued unless poverty is eradicated from the country which appears impossible in any near future. Therefore, strict and stringent laws should be immediately enacted which can clearly determine the relations between a house servant and the employer, inter-alia, the minimum age of the house servant and his emoluments and punishments awarded to employers if they torture and manhandle the servants.
S TAJAMMAL H RIZVI,
Lahore, January 22.
