By EUGENE ADIONG
BACOLOD City — The Provincial Council for the Rights and Welfare of Children (PCRWC) will launch tomorrow a monitoring system that can track the child labor situation in Negros Occidental.
The Child Labor Monitoring System (CLMS) will be first used in 15 sugar-producing cities and municipalities covered by ABK3 LEAP project of World Vision and with support from Microsoft.
CLMS works by collating information on child labor in a community using a Nokia Data Gathering (NDG) software in mobile phones.
NDG collects field data, enables paperless data gathering and facilitates a faster, real-time transmission of collected data for analysis.
Community watch groups complete a survey form to collect data on children’s education and work status and households’ received services, and transmit them to the NDG server.
Data that can be generated from the NDG server are vital to the creation of programs and policies for the reduction of child labor in sugarcane farms.
The system’s launching will be held at the Nature’s Village Resort in Talisay City.
Target local government units (LGUs) include Bacolod, Bago, Escalante, Kabankalan, Sagay, San Carlos, Silay, Talisay and Victorias cities, and Cauayan, La Castellana, Manapla, Moises Padilla, Murcia and Toboso towns.
National Statistics Office 2011 Survey on Children showed there were 5.49 million economically active children aged five to 17 years old.
About 3.03 million of them were engaged in child labor, and an estimated 2.99 million child laborers were working in hazardous conditions, with 62 percent from the agriculture sector.
While there is no available data specific to child labor in sugarcane farms, ABK3 LEAP’s baseline data in Negros Occidental documented 30,760 households with children working in sugarcane farms in 60 barangays within 15 cities and municipalities.
Mayors, municipal social welfare and development, and planning officers of the target LGUs and PCRWC members are expected to grace the launching, which will feature a CLMS demonstration./PN
