With 130 million inhabitants and a quarter of its population earning less than $ 1 a day, Pakistan is one of the major countries to export sports goods, especially hand-stitched footballs. Sialkot (situated in the province of Punjab) and the 1,450 neighbouring villages account for about 75% of the world production of footballs.
In 1997-1998, 35.4 million footballs were exported for a total amount of 5,000 million Pakistani rupees.With a total of 40 million children between 5 and 14, Pakistan has about 3.3 million child workers.According to the ILO, between 5 and 7000 children aged between 5 and 14 worked in the football industry in 1996.
Rotary club of sialkot plan to work with a local NGO in the field of child labour and education of children.