KARACHI – From the age of 10, Amina has been scrubbing, sweeping and cooking in a middle-class home in Pakistan’s megacity of Karachi.
Like millions of Pakistani children, she is a household helper, an illegal but common practice that brings grief to families often too poor to seek justice.
“Alongside my mother, I cut vegetables, wash dishes, sweep the floor and mop. I hate working for this family,” said the 13-year-old, who leaves her slum neighborhood in Karachi at 7 am and often returns after dark.
“Sometimes we work on Sundays even though it’s supposed to be our only day off, and that’s really unfair.”
One in four households in a country of 255 million people employs a child as a domestic worker, mostly girls aged 10 to 14, according to a 2022 report by the International Labor Organization. AFP
Sania, 13, earns $15 a month helping her mother maintain a sprawling luxury home in the city, where she has been explicitly forbidden to speak to her employer’s children or touch their toys.
AFP is not publishing the full names of children and parents interviewed to protect their identities.
Sania gets half the salary of her mother for the same hours, together earning $46 — far below the minimum wage of 40,000 rupees ($140).
“I dreamed of finishing school and becoming a doctor,” said the eldest of five siblings who, according to the law, should be in school until the age of 16.
A university professor who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity employs a 10-year-old boy because children are “cheaper and more docile”.
“I know it’s immoral and illegal to employ a child, but at least he has a roof and is well fed here,” he said.
