Lahore Carpet Industry

Metroblogging Lahore has a feature on carpets and the carpet industry in Lahore. Via Global Voice Online

Related:

: Combating child labour in the carpet industry

The project, Combating Child Labour in the Carpet Industry in Pakistan, is based on an agreement signed between the PCMEA (Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers' and Exporters' Association) and the ILO in 1998. The agreement outlined the PCMEA-ILO partnership to eliminate child labour in the carpet industry in Pakistan. The project, which started in 2002, aims to provide non-formal education, mainstreaming, and pre-vocational education to about 23,000 carpet weaving children, and access to micro credit to the 1,000 poorest carpet weaving households. The first phase of the project was successfully implemented in three districts (Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, and Hafizabad) and, in the second phase, the project has been expanded to three other districts (Multan, Faisalabad, and Toba Tek Singh).

 

More current details can be found at the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour.

: Child slavery in the carpet industry

: More from Global March

The Bonded Labour Liberation Front estimates that eight million children are bonded in Pakistan. Half a million are allegedly bonded in the carpet industry alone. A UNICEF report estimated that there are 1.2 million children are engaged in the Pakistan carpet industry. A minimum of 250,000 children live and work in brick kilns in complete social isolation. They are totally illiterate and have no hope of escaping from this inferno. In fact these children are bonded labourers, driven into this miserable state by the fact that their entire families have been ‘pawned’ to the owners by virtue of their having pledged their labour in return for so-called ‘advances’ taken, sometimes by their ancestors, which, even after the entire family having toiled for years on subsistence wages in prison-like conditions, is not accounted as repaid.

Comments

[lubna pasha]

aol..i have been in rug/carpet business since 2003.i do design and have a proper workshop to manufacture.good to know your mission....anything i can do for u people..plz let me know!!!