CRUNCH TIME: Election workers in Lahore struggling to pick up ballot boxes for their districts yesterday on the eve of the vote. -- PHOTO: AP

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Filthy, barefoot children scurry among heaps of rubbish collected by scavengers in a squalid camp on the outskirts of the eastern city of Lahore.

Just like their parents, none of the children has ever been to school and all but the youngest have to help to scrape a living recycling paper and plastic. Families sleep on the floor in makeshift tents. There is no running water and no health care.

Just a few kilometres away, in a whitewashed villa surrounded by neatly clipped lawns and set among orange groves, multi-millionaire and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was still sleeping at 10am on the eve of the election, his aides said.

The leaders of the other two main parties, the husband of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the leader of the party that backs President Pervez Musharraf, were also at home in luxurious Lahore villas on a day when campaigning was banned ahead of the polls.

'We are not expecting any change in our life whoever comes to power,' said Mr Khoushi Mohammad, a scavenger. 'We are Pakistanis, but they don't even consider us to be human beings.'

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He said that he was not registered to vote in the election anyway. All but one of the men and women crowding around said they did not have a vote either.

Pakistan's election has brought them some good though. Some of the men said they had been paid by political parties to swell the numbers at rallies.

'They just use us for their political interests,' said a man known as Ghafoor. 'They take us to their different rallies to make a show, that's it.'

Pakistan has seen strong economic growth in recent years but few of the benefits trickle all the way down to the poorest.

Decades of internal political strife and alternating periods of military and civilian rule have taken an economic toll. About a quarter of Pakistan's 160 million people live in poverty.

According to Unicef, one in 10 children in Pakistan do not live to their fifth birthday; 30 per cent of children are chronically malnourished and lack access to safe water; and the government spends less than 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product on education.

The scavengers said they earned between 50 rupees (S$1.10) and 100 rupees a day collecting rubbish, a job they had done for generations, and they see little chance of their children escaping the same fate.

'Everyone wants a good life, good food and a good education for their children, but these are just dreams,' said Mr Ghafoor.

'We sleep on the earth floor and live among the rubbish, but we still have dreams.'

When Pakistan's slain opposition leader and first female premier Benazir Bhutto was alive, school governess Naziesh Mubarak Ali had high hopes that her lot in life would improve.

But since Ms Bhutto's death in a suicide bomb attack in December, Ms Ali's optimism has dimmed.

'Male politicians have done nothing. They do nothing for the poor and working class,' the 40-year-old said in Lahore. 'We need another leader like Benazir Bhutto.'

Some women have been stung by what they see as decades of neglect by governments.

'Women have a lot of problems - health care, education, jobs,' said 45-year-old Yahya, who gave only one name.

'There is no proper representation of women in politics here, or in anything else. I expect no change.'

Female literacy stands at just 35 per cent compared with 64 per cent for men, United Nations figures show, while reports of so-called honour killings, 'fatwas' against women accused of un-Islamic behaviour and gang-rapes as a form of punishment regularly make headlines worldwide.

Ms Nassim Syed, who has been forced to beg on Lahore's streets because of poverty, said she supported Ms Bhutto because she was a woman and she spoke out for the poor.

'My husband was paralysed two months ago and there is no source of income.

'I have six children...it is very difficult for me to survive in these conditions,' she said.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE