Children risking their lives

 

A very important social issue that is tearing our society apart is the menace of child labour. It is affecting the children of our country. Many children between the ages of 7 to 15 start working for their families to help them. 152 million kids are still in child labour and it also said that in some places children work in hazardous places too.

Our society is not helping these children. They are making these children to do more work and then they give them less wages. These children also get mentally and physically abused. Now a days, due to COVID-19, I feel these children might be in much worse conditions and without a safety net. We as a society should work together to find a solid solution to end child labour. We need to realise that change starts with us! We need to change our mindset and Pakistan needs to create better living standards for the underprivileged so that their children never have to work.

YAWAR SHAIKH,

Lahore.

 
 

Barriers to girls education

 

Do you think education is important for the development of a nation? Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Give me an educated mother, I shall promise the birth of a civilised nation.” Education has a key role in the development of a country. Pakistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. In 2015 at Oslo Summit On Education And Development, Pakistan was described as ‘Among the world’s worst-performing countries in education’.

The new government, elected in 2018, stated in their manifesto that nearly 22.5 million children are out of schools, girls are particularly affected. Female education is as necessary as male education. We have seen in the history of the world that those nations are in the lines of leading developed nations who have educated their women and men equally. But unfortunately, the situation of female education in Pakistan is not as good as it should be. Many organisations are working on their improvement. There are some major obstructions in the way of female education but the situation may be improved if some steps are taken with responsibilities. The importance of female education is obviously everything.

The education of females is necessary for a society in many ways. There are some problems occurring in the way of female education in Pakistan. Religious misinterpretation is also one of them. Some people consider female education against religion so they do not let their daughters get an education. They are afraid that girls will become liberal when they are educated. Girls across our country do, of course, face barriers within their homes and communities which make it more difficult for them to get an adequate education. Many people still do not believe that girls need to be educated or they believe that girls should stop study beyond a certain age, typically puberty. However, even here the reasons are not entirely cultural. Survey work indicates

that many families fear that their older girls will face sexual harassment at school and on the way there and back.

I wrap up my discussion with these remarks that the government should find out the solution to this problem, policies of education should be changed and we should bring change at the local level through awareness and practical action.

JAVERIYA KHAN,

Karachi.

 
 

Flight resumption plan

 

What Pakistan, a country with scarce financial resources and a medical system lacking capacity to handle a pandemic that mutates exponentially, is criminal negligence of men at the helm in decision making. We must understand that decisions about reopening borders, resumption of flights, relaxation in lockdown, etc. should be left to medical specialists and scientists who specialise in infectious deceases and nobody else. Prudence demands that we learn from the experience of countries that have succeeded in containing exponential spread and not those who failed to do so.

South Korea and the USA, both countries with sufficient financial reserves and scientific research had their first COVIT-19 patients on the same day, 25 January 2020. While authorities in South Korea chose to let their medical specialists decide the plan to face pandemic, the American political leadership chose to take matters in their own hand, ignoring specialist’s advice. The results are there to evaluate. South Korea embarked on a plan for extensive checking and lockdown, while in the USA they wasted 5 weeks and today it has become an epicenter after Italy, Spain, and UK with fatalities rising exponentially and infected numbers highest in the world.

Sanity demands that we in Pakistan must realize that decisions to resume international flights etc. must not be the domain of either religious clergy, NDMA, nor CAA or Federal Cabinet, but must be left to the wisdom of our medical specialists and researchers who can seek the advice of countries like China and South Korea and not the USA. Allowing zaireen from Iran and Umrah pilgrims, or expatriates from COVIT19 infected Europe and UK, without first ensuring that infrastructure for mandatory quarantine and testing exists, is having its toll. We cannot afford any further influx of those likely to be infected and deadly the threat of secondary infections they pose.

MALIK TARIQ ALI,

Lahore.