Suicide seen in death of child worker in Zambo

ZAMBOANGA CITY—A 14-year-old boy, whom police said had been complaining about his family’s poor economic condition and the need for him to work at an early age, had committed suicide.

Chief Inspector Ariel Huesca, spokesperson of the Western Mindanao police, said days before he killed himself, the teenager had already been making an issue out of his being a child laborer.

The boy worked as sap tapper at a rubber plantation in a village in Tampilisan, Zamboanga del Norte.

Quoting the statement made by the teen’s grandmother to Tampilisan police investigators, Huesca said the boy had not understood why he had to work at an early age.

Huesca said the boy was also hurting from having come from a broken family and was so depressed that he had tried to commit suicide days before he actually killed himself on June 6.

“He had repeatedly told his grandmother that he was already tired of working as a rubber tapper,” he said.

But the grandmother told police that her grandson continued to work to support her, as she could no longer take a job due to her illness, Huesca said.

He said the grandmother believed that the boy might have been so depressed that he repeatedly tried but failed to kill himself during the past weeks.

“At around 10 a.m. on June 6, [she] found her grandson’s body hanging by the roof bridge of her house,” Huesca said.

He said the neighbors rushed the boy to Tampilisan Rural Health Center but efforts by government physician Nathielda Ladesa to revive him did not succeed. Julie Alipala, Inquirer Mindanao