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Iqbal find thirty-two children covered by scabies and wounds. The quotation below potrays the Iqbal’s situation at the time:
Less than a month after we had been rescued, Iqbal managed to sneak into a carpet factory that was hidden in a damp cellar in the northern
outskirts of Lahore. He found thirty-two children covered with scabies and wounds, so thin their ribs almost cut through their skin. He spoke
to them. He showed them the scars on his hands to win their trust, and he took photos of the chains, the looms, the water seeping in. The
place was raided three days later by some men from the Liberation Front, accompanied by a magistrate and policemen, who arrested the
proprietor and freed the children Leonori 2003:94
Bonded Labour Liberation Front is a solution for child labour in Pakistan at the time. Iqbal and Bonded Labour Liberation Front succeed to protect some of Pakistan’s children at
the time. Iqbal win a Reebok awards for all of his struggle against child labour at the time. It is a prize given to a young person who had done something of merit in any country in the
world, “This year the prize has been awarded to Iqbal. Leonari 2003:108. Iqbal’s dream comes true. Iqbal is known all over the world, “It means that now youre known all over the
world and so is our fight against child labor” Leonari 2003:108.
4.3 The Connection between Poverty and Child Labour
Poverty is described as the situation where there is no enough food and place to live in. Poverty is also a situation where there are many unemployment and uneducated people.
People who live below poverty line, live in severe housing conditions with poor sanitary and hygienic conditions. Many of them live in slums or poor residential areas with lack of
health care and nutrition sufficiency. Poverty is a social problem where all the victim want to get out of the poverty’s cycle.
In Iqbal, Poverty is the root of another social problems. Poverty creates many problems such as child labour, corruption, crime, stupdity, and human trafficking. Women
and children are often being the victim of poverty.
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Child labour is one of social problems that is caused by poverty. Child labor is a kind of child workers who work hard jobs or do physical hard work. Child labour refers to the
employment of children in any work that deprives them from their childhood and confines them for getting appropriate education. It is mentally, physically, socially and morally
dangerous and harmful for the children. In Iqbal, children became the victim of poverty at that time. Children who are under
ten years of age have to work in the hazardous areas. Children were working in forced and bonded labour conditions. When families are in debt, they rent or sent their children whose
age are just around four or five years old to work for a master in factory. In Iqbal, most of families have no enough income to support their daily needs. That
situation makes them have to borrow some money from the money lender. As the result, children are sent to the carpet weaver in order to pay off their families’s debt to the local
money lender. They are bonded by the master untill their debt are completed as potrayed in the quotations below:
Across the courtyard from the house was a long building, the carpet factory, where fourteen of us worked. We had all been bonded to Hussain
Khan to pay off debts our families had contracted with local moneylenders. The building had a tin roof and a dirt floor, so it was hot
in the summer and cold in the winter. Leonari 2003:1.
Iqbal’s father has to borrow twenty-six dollars from the money lender in order to survive until the next harvest. The money is used to buy some medicine for Iqbal’s brother.
That situation forces him to send Iqbal to the carpet weaver as potrayed in the quotation below:
My father had a debt, too, I whispered in the dark, after the embankment broke and he lost everything. A man came to talk to him,
and then Hussain came and brought me here. Iqbal continued, My father said that he could send one of my sisters, but
I said, `No, send me.` He hugged me and asked if I was afraid. `No,` I said, but I was lying. The carpet maker came the next morning. He came
by car, and was very nice, even to my mother. `Im taking you to the
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city,` he said. `Youll like it, just wait and see.` I looked through the rear window of the car, and the last thing I saw while he took me away was
my father whipping the poor buffalo, pushing it through the field. You should have heard the poor beast lowing. Leonari 2003:19.
The connection between poverty and child labour is also found in the Fatima and Maria’s families at the time. Maria and Fatima have to work in their early ages to pay off
their family debt. Their poor families condition force them to work in the Hussain Khan’s carpet weaver. From their families, poverty is the only reason for them to work as the child
labourers. It is as portrayed in the quotation below; But Marias father never wanted to go to the rich. That is, until he finally
had to ask for help from the village moneylender. And then he had to ask again. The second time he came home and didnt say another word, and the
next morning some men came to take Maria away. Her father didnt even lift his head from the cot where he was lying. From that moment Maria
stopped talking and reading. Now she was teaching herself again, as she taught us the strange symbols of the alphabet.Leonori 2003:76
From all the explanations above, it can be concluded that poverty is the root of child labour. Poverty compels people to do every thing to get some money, they even have to send
their own children to work as child laborer. Children who are supposed to enjoy their childhood forced to work hard. Children have to work to help their families’s income.
4.5 Finding
