PANAY News mentioned in its editorial of Feb. 12 data in 2016 from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) that about 10,000 children were reported as engaged in criminal activities, all coming from poor families, with six to eight members, on the average, accused of theft and other property-related offenses. Given the circumstances related to this report of DSWD, there is now a move in Congress to lower the age of criminal responsibility fixed by law at 15 to 12 as a solution to juvenile delinquency.
With theft and property-related offenses as the common cause of the delinquency, we believe that lowering the age of criminal responsibility is no solution and the number of youth delinquents will continue to increase. It is obvious that the key to the problem is poverty and unschooled children.
A couple of years ago we wrote about the case of a poultry feed factory in Pavia, Iloilo, with a dozen or so employees but had a problem. They were always availing themselves of advances against their salaries even as early as a week after payday. The reason for it was that they had children in college which they supported and their salaries could hardly meet their needs, hence the advances.
The feed factory owner was very sympathetic and thought of assisting them and eventually stop the practice by setting up a scholarship program that worked in the following manner:
He offered a college tuition scholarship program at one child for each of his employees, preferably the eldest, on condition that the first scholar in the family who will finish will sponsor another sibling to also graduate from college, and so on, until every child in the family obtains a college degree.
It worked! The firm later did not have any more scholars to sponsor when everyone of the employees’ children who have graduated under the program would get a job and now support one younger sibling as his college scholar down the line as applied to all the younger brothers and sisters that follow.
We are happy to see that this poultry feed factory in Pavia, Iloilo built along the old railroad tracts along the highway to the Iloilo airport now greatly expanded. We like to believe that its good personnel policy contributed much to its success.
If every business firm in our country adopts this simple program we cited here implemented by the feed mill in Pavia for its employees, we will be reducing the number of dependents in every family because a college graduate will have better opportunity to find jobs than the unschooled or dropouts that government intends to help by lowering the age of criminal responsibility.
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Historical Quote of the Week
“Iloilo is the site of the first research international center in the fishing industry with the establishment f SEAFDEC in Tigbauan, Iloilo.” (For comments or re-actions, please e-mail to jnoveracompany@yahoo.com)/PN
