London, Jan. 31 (TNS): Children as young as 12 years old are making surgical instruments in hazardous conditions in Pakistan, prompting fears that the tools could be used in the United Kingdom’s top hospital, The Guardian revealed.
Illegal child labour was witnessed in at least a dozen small workshops in Sialkot, the north-eastern city of Punjab, where 99% of the country’s surgical instrument production is centred.
Boys are paid less than $1 a day to cut, drill, bend and polish steel pieces into gleaming surgical tools for export.
Inside the cramped workshops, metal dust is everywhere and the noise of the grinders, polishers and generators is deafening. But there is no sign of protective goggles, earphones, masks or other safety equipment.
Three companies that export to the UK said they buy instruments from these workshops.
The evidence has ignited fears in Britain that tools used routinely in the National Health Service (NHS) operating theatres and consulting rooms are made with child labour.
NHS Supply Chain, among the largest suppliers to the NHS, bans child labour from its “first tier” suppliers, most of whom are based in the UK. However, it admitted it does not know which manufacturers are used in Pakistan.
Doctors, politicians and a labour rights group, the Ethical Trading Initiative, say more must be done to ensure child labour is not found in the NHS supply chain.
Britain is the third largest buyer of surgical instruments from Pakistan, accounting for 10% of the country’s total exports. In all, 80%-90% of surgical instruments are manufactured in the country, according to NHS Supply Chain.
