It was the end of December, people were excited about celebrating New Year Eve and wishing their friends a happy New Year. I had just reached home and was on the way to my room. I was thinking about the coming year 2017 and also remembering the one that was ending.

I was lost in deep thought and many miserable moments which I had witnessed, flashed across my mind. One day in February 2016, I was passing the same way towards my home when I got a shock.

Do you know why? Because I was looking at children of school-going ages collecting garbage and begging. It was almost 12:15 pm, I was in a shop to buy something for our lunch where a small boy, approximately of 10 to 12 years, came to me and said, 

“Brother can you give me 20 rupees to buy a naan, I have not eaten food since last night.” 

“Do you have any siblings at your home?” I asked him.

The boy’s eyes began to tear up and replied, “I do not have siblings. My beloved father had passed away before my birth and my mother is suffering from an illness for almost 10 days now. There is no other person in our house to earn money, so that’s why last night neither my mother nor I had any dinner. There was nothing to cook as we are very poor.”

Seeing the small boy with a dream buried in his eyes made me sad and I felt disappointment that we, being the sons and daughters of Balochs, seem to have lost our care for others.

At that time I also saw more children who were carrying schoolbags and coming from a nearby school. They seemed well-dressed and well-fed, obviously from affluent families and passing their lives happily, with no care in the world.

Undoubtedly, poverty increases the crime rate in society and gives rise to other problems, such as child labour. The poor are deprived of education, they suffer from malnutrition and don’t have enough healthcare facilities.

In Balochistan, as in many other parts of the country, poor children are left in the lurch. Food is a fundamental requirement of everyone and for this our government needs to provide food for those who are down-and-out. Furthermore, it is astonishing and disheartening that Balochistan, being a resource-rich province of Pakistan, is a place where many people are living in the dark, waiting for the dawn.

So this is the right time for the leaders and the government of Balochistan to help children from poor families, as they also have the right to a good education and a peaceful life.

A wise man once said, “Nobody can go in the past and start a new beginning, but everyone can start today and make a new ending.”

We need to make the change we want to see in society.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 7th, 2017