ISLAMABAD - In spite of the prohibitions as enshrined in the constitution and a number of laws enacted over the years for elimination of all forms of child labour, the problem continues unabated in the country. Besides insufficient enforcement of legislation, there are several other important factors for exploitation of children in the form of child labour such as inadequate availability of educational institutions and poor quality of education coupled with ignorance, negligence and attitude of the society. Although political parties, workers, national and international labour organisations and other segments of the working class actively observed International Labour Day on Friday by holding rallies, special meetings and processions across the country, yet no change has so far occurred with respect to the plight of poor labourers.There is no constructive change in the lives of the millions of young workers, who have to work hard to win their days bread across the country. So far, a number of programmes have been initiated to address the problems of labourers without yielding any result. In Pakistan the first Child Labour Survey (CLS) was conducted in 1996 by the Federal Bureau of Statistics. It revealed that there were 3.3 million identified children (in the 5-14 years age group), 2.4 million of boys and 0.9 million girls. Primarily, a reasonable progress on the government level took place on children issue in April 1991, when the Employment of Children Act (ECA) was promulgated followed by a number of administrative and other initiatives to address the dilemma more effectively. The realisation further strengthened, when the government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the ILO-IPEC (International Labour Organisation and International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour) in 1994. The momentum created by ILO-IPEC along with initiatives of the government resulted in the formulation of the National Policy and Plan of Action to combat the issue. Although the national policy and the plan of action was the first major initiative that provides a broad framework to both public and private sector to make holistic interventions for elimination of child labours, yet the proper implementation of short and long term strategies of NP have not been witnessed so far, resulting in increase of child labour with every passing day. In addition to the NP and PoA, the government also approved the National Policy and Plan of Action for Abolition of Bonded Labour and Rehabilitation of Freed Bonded Labourers in 2001. However, TheNation has learnt that due to lack of co-ordination and inability of government support action plan for abolishing bonded labour could not be implemented effectively. Put against the overall state of labour, it is pertinent to mention here the constitution provides the right to form unions and prohibits all forms of slavery. including forced labour, makes provisions for improving human conditions of work and prohibited all forms of gender discriminations at work place. However, still most of the labourers are not governed by the protective labour laws or regulations on working conditions. So far five labour policies have been announced in 1955, 1959, 1969, 1972, 2002 and more recently, the Labour Protection Policy and Labour Inspection Policy 2006 followed the same restrictive pattern. However, administrative reforms and implementation still await constructive change in plight of labourers. The situation is more deplorable in rural areas, where a vast majority of male and female labourers are being paid just in kind and not in cash.