LAHORE: Boycotting negotiation with the provincial labour authorities here on Wednesday, brick kiln owners decided to court arrest against what they said unjustified attitude of the government on the child labour issue.

`We`ll hold protest demonstrations at all district headquarters of Punjab on Monday (Feb 29) and court arrest as the authorities are bent upon humiliating us instead of solving the (child labour)issuethrough dialogue,`Shoaib Khan Niazi, the president of the BrickKiln Owners Association, told Dawn after boycotting talks with Labour Secretary Ali Sarfraz here.

He said the secretary had invited the association on a short notice for a dialogue on implementation of the Child Labour Ordinance at kilns. But when a team visited him, he adopted a humiliating attitude forcing them to boycott the talks, Niazi said.

The association has already announced suspension of sale of bricks from Friday (tomorrow) in the first phase and then complete closure of the kilns from March 18.

`We don`t understand why the secretary is complicating the situation instead of finding a solution,` he said, urging Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to take notice of it.

To protest the attitude, he said, the association had decided to hold demonstrations at the district level and court arrest. Niazi claimed that the chiefminister was being tricked into believing that child labour was going on at kilns by presenting him wrong data.

He claimed that the `child` named Danish found to be working at a Kasur Road kiln during a recent raid by the chief minister is, in fact, 15 plus years old whereas the law proscribes labour up to 14 years of age. To prove his assertion, he presented a copy of the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) certificate showing Danish`s birth date as Jan 26, 2001.

The kiln owners say they are ready to cooperate with the government in banning child labour at their bricl<-malcing units, arguing that it is also in their financial interest as the bricks made by children are of comparatively inferior quality. But, they lament, the government is making them a scapegoat by not accommodating their point of view in the law against the child labour.