DOLE, DSWD join hands vs child labor in upland farms

BAGUIO CITY—Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz on Friday launched in Sagada, Mt. Province, an antichild labor crusade among upland farming communities as the government pushes programs aimed at reducing child labor in the Philippines before 2015.

Speaking to reporters at the 12th Public Employment Service Office (Peso) Congress here on Thursday, Baldoz said the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has tied up with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to convince Cordillera farmers to allow their children to stay in school instead of working in the farms.

“The DOLE says there are 70,000 child laborers in the upland region, although the figure needs further validation,” said Leonardo Reynoso, DSWD Cordillera director.

He said the DOLE and the DSWD are cooperating to develop a modified conditional cash transfer (CCT) program for families with child laborers. CCT is a subsidy mechanism where government issues poor families a monthly cash grant of up to P1,400, provided the families ensure that their children regularly attend school and are subjected to regular medical examination at the closest health centers.

“There are permissible activities for children. They normally would get a permit from [the labor office] if they are engaged in occupation. What we are preventing are hazardous occupations and the worst forms of child labor… [such as] those exposed to hazardous pesticides,” said Baldoz.

She said a survey by the National Statistics Office showed that 60 percent of child workers in the country are in the agriculture sector. But stopping child labor in poverty-stricken communities is easier said than done, Cordillera officials said.

In many instances, Cordillera families consider their children as their trainees on which they pass on skills for family enterprises they are expected to pursue as adults, said Peter Cosalan, a member of the Cordillera Regional Development Council.

This is common to small-scale mining communities as well as farming villages, he said.

“Looking at the subsistence-level families [in the region], the core Cordillera households [in farming or mining communities] cannot afford to hire farm labor, so children are part of the [workforce there],” Cosalan said.

The National Statistical Coordination Board said “children, women and the self-employed and unpaid family workers account for the largest number of poor population in the Cordillera in 2009.”

“We cannot criminalize the use of children in our farms [given the cultural circumstances, so] we have to study if it is possible to bring education to these children even if they are working in the fields,” Cosalan said.  Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon