Child labor

CHILD LABOR is work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.

In the Philippines, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), about 95 percent of child laborers (around two million, aged 5-17 years old based on a 2011 survey) are in hazardous work. Children work in farms and plantations, in dangerous mines, on streets, in factories, and in private homes as child domestic workers. Agriculture remains to be the sector where most child laborers can be found.

The problem appears to be getting worse. According to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), new forms of child labor in which young children work without pay are emerging.  One is “own-use production work.” This involves production of goods and services for own final use such as producing and processing for storage of agricultural, fishing and gathering products. This type of work can also involve cleaning, maintaining one’s own dwelling or premises. The other is “unpaid trainee work.” Children perform work for others without pay to acquire job experience or skills, including training or re-training schemes within employment promotion programs. And still, there’s another one – “volunteer work.” Non-compulsory work is performed for others without pay through mutual aid or community-based groups of which the volunteer is a member.

What do we make of these?

Clearly, the big challenge to the government is to create decent jobs. Poverty is driving these sad labor statistics to stratospheric heights. Filipinos are leaving the country in record numbers because there is a chronic lack of decent jobs here. Children are being forced to work because their parents either have no jobs or are earning pitiful sums in their work.