Project targets worst forms of child labor

Reducing the worst forms of child labor in the country is the goal of a new project of the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) and the International Labor Organization-International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO-IPEC).

The new project, entitled Strengthening National Capacities to Support the Philippine Program Against Child Labor’s (PPACL)Vision of a Child Labor-Free Philippines, aims to contribute to the PPACL’s goal to reduce the incidence of the worst forms of child labor (WFCL) by as much as 75 percent.

”From 2005 to 2008, the Gender Statistics on Labor and Employment (GSLE) posted a 7 percent downward trend in the number of children 5-17 years old who are economically active. But while the GSLE generates data on working children, there still seems to be a dearth in data on children who are in the worst forms of child labor,” Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said.

”This concern of the Philippine Program Against Child Labor will now be responded to with the conduct of a special survey on children, a new project of the DoLE and the ILO-IPEC,” she added. The project will have four components – Knowledge Management; Effective Partnership; Area- Based Services in the provinces of Quezon, Masbate, Northern Samar and Bukidnon; and Sustainability. The four provinces were identified by the PPACL partners and the ILO-IPEC based on the same GSLE data which shows a concentration of working children in those areas. –Manila Bulletin