40,000 Pakistani Children Toil In Carpet Industry

by Zofeen Ebrahim

(IPS) KARACHI -- More than 1,200 boys and girls from villages in the Thar Desert have begun attending school under a project aimed at educating children who toil as weavers in the local carpet industry.

One of them is nine-year-old Pratap, who never raises his eyes from his work as he speaks. ''I love to study and now that I can go to school, I sit fewer hours on the loom,'' he says. Like other children who work as carpet weavers, his knuckles are disfigured and swollen. But that's not the worst of it, he says. Rather, ''it's sitting at length that's killing.''

He sits on a wooden bench under a low-slung thatched awning just outside his mud house. His workspace is cramped and dim, the air thick with fluff and fibres.

The desert stretches out to the horizon and beyond. The house, like the rest of the village, lacks electricity. The nearest water well is an hour's trek away.

The pattern that has begun to emerge on the other side of the loom is beautiful but Pratap is indifferent to his handiwork. He says he just wants to finish the day's work so he can go out and play in what little daylight is left.

Unlike his brother Assan, a 20-year-old who has worked the looms for more than eight years, Pratap can go to school in the mornings and work in the afternoon.

Samki, a 12-year-old girl, enjoys fewer liberties than boys in the village, so school has been even more of a breakthrough for her.

''I am sometimes allowed to go to my friend's house. The thing I hate most about carpet weaving is that I have to sit for long stretches,'' she says, adding that school provides much-needed respite.

''When my father comes back after selling the carpet, he gives me 10 to 15 rupees and brings whatever I ask for,'' Samki adds, showing the red bangles around her thin wrist and her plain rubber slippers.

Pratap and Samki are among 40,000 children working in the carpet industry in the deserts of Sindh province. Of the total, some 990 boys and 361 girls have enrolled in schools under a working children's rights project that aims to lighten their workload.

The effort is part of the homespun, non-governmental Thardeep Rural Development Project (TRDP) and is funded by international aid groups Save the Children and Comic Relief.

The project makes small, low-interest loans that highly indebted weaver families can use to settle more usurious claims against them and to buy their own looms and break free of bondage to contractors who rented out equipment to the weavers, paid the weavers in kind, and obliged the weavers to buy supplies and groceries from cronies who overcharged.

''In return, their children who sit on the loom have to go to school in the morning. Beside that, there is pressure on the families to better their working environment,'' says Jiwan Das, a Save the Children program manager.

''We do not want them working for long hours or at the expense of missing out on school,'' Das adds.

''At the same time, we want them to pick up the craft and learn so that it does not die an unsung death.''

Relieved of onerous debts and given direct access to markets, weaver families have seen their lot improve, according to Assan, Pratap's elder brother.

''We were making two carpets in three months. Now, productivity has slowed but the profit margin has increased as no middleman is involved,'' he says, referring to the now-sidelined contractors.

Having cash also has enabled the family to shop for weaving supplies at prices lower than those offered by the contractors' cronies.

But Lajpat, a contractor who once rented out 250 looms to weavers, says he holds no grudge against the weavers who have bought out their looms from him using TRDP credit.

''We're happy for them,'' he says. ''They are now getting a better deal. So what if we are equal and the contractor-weaver relationship is not there anymore. I do find that change, but I don't mind at all.''

He says he has raised enough money from the sales to send his son to school abroad.

Apart from providing loans, the project also seeks to raise the standard of education.

''The local government was involved and meetings were organized with teacher training centers in Karachi,'' the provincial capital, says Das.

The project has had teething pains. While it was easy to persuade parents to send very young children to school, it took some cajoling to persuade them to send children aged between 10 and 14 years -- prime ages for child carpet weavers.

Some families enrolled their children in school to get project loans, but then employed under-age workers from elsewhere in the community.

One weaver, Phulo, sent his younger brother to school instead of the niece for whom he got the loan.

''If I send her to school, who will help me?'' he asks.

Phulo has a family of eight and is supporting his brother's widow and children. His own wife died in childbirth.

''Now that I have my own loom, a lot of pressure has been lifted off me. I've become energized. Even my fingers work quicker now that my mind is relaxed. There is an added incentive for me, the more I work, the more money I will make and the faster I'll be able to pay off the loan. Life has never been better,'' he says.

Once the loan is paid off, he adds, he promises to send his niece to school.