He works fulltime making surgical instruments, grinding and polishing German stainless steel castings in a Pakistani workshop filled with poisonous metal dust. He works with no hand or eye protection. He will probably be condemned to struggle in poverty all his life. American health care institutions are the biggest customers for the scissors, scalpels and other instruments made by Muhammad and 7,700 other children in the city of Sialkot, the center of a surgical instruments industry that supplies a significant share of the world market. Now the world's trade unions including the Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals have launched a campaign to help Muhammad and his young co-workers.
Child labor is simply wrong.
Child labor undermines children's futures and it undermines the continuing struggle to ensure safe working conditions and fair pay for all workers. Engelberts has contacted nine major American suppliers of surgical instruments. Only four responded. But Engelberts said it's essential for companies to agree to a monitoring system. The campaign's goal is to get the big, multinational companies that sell surgical instruments to work with their Pakistani suppliers to phase out child labor and expand children's access to education and vocational training.