8 Million children in Pakistan face food shortage

This file photo shows a boy sitting on the ground crying as he waits for an evening food handout at a center for flood victims near Nowshera in Pakistan's northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on August 23, 2010.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/155686.html


Eight million Pakistani children are suffering from food shortage in Pakistan and 3.5 million others do forced hard labor, a provincial official says.

Adviser to Sindh Chief Minister on Information Shamila Farooqi told reporters that the recent devastating floods had affected about seven million Pakistanis, a Press TV correspondent reported on Thursday.

“There are more than 10,000 street children under the age of 15 in Karachi while over 4,500 children are in prisons, out of which cases of 66 percent children are in pending at courts,” Farooqi added.

She further pointed out that flood-affected children are facing problems in getting medical treatment and education because many of the schools in interior Sindh were damaged or affected by the floods.

According to Farooqi, about 23 million Pakistani children are deprived of even basic education.

“Child Rights Bureau is the need of the hour to protect child rights and provide health, education and other facilities to them, particularly those affected by the floods,” she concluded.