Baldoz: DoLE to declare 80 barangays child labor-free

The Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) has identified the initial 80 barangays in the country’s 16 regions that it plans to declare child labor-free this year with the help of other government agencies and private sector partners.

At the same time, Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada has called on the DoLE and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to maintain close coordination and step up drive against child labor amidst the high incidence of children involved in hazardous labor.

“As we said earlier, we have a very high resolve to lick the child-labor menace in our midst, and we will work on it, one barangay at a time, until we are able to liberate all the country’s barangays with high incidences of child labor and make them child labor-free,” Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said.

Baldoz explained that the DoLE’s Child Labor-Free Barangay Campaign was central to the direction of the Philippine Program Against Child Labor that aims to prevent and progressive elimination of child labor incidence in the country.

“Most of these 80 barangays that we have targeted for the campaign are barangays of the 609 municipalities on the List of Focus Cities and Municipalities of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC). Thus, these barangays are the priorities for convergence of funding, other resources, and technical expertise of government agencies engaged in development work,” she said.

Baldoz observed that most of the forms of child labor existing in these target barangays are in mining; farm work; deep-sea fishing; pyrotechnics production; stevadoring; vending; rubber budding; banana bagging; cargo loading; sugarcane farming; scavenging; waitressing/waitering; and pedicab driving.

She explained that to effectively carry out the campaign, the DoLE regional offices are closely working with local government units through the barangay captains and their officials, as well as community leaders, including parent-leaders who are grantees of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).

“We are utilizing in the campaign strategies such as stricter enforcement of child labor laws, knowledge sharing through the Child Labor Knowledge Sharing System, integrated livelihood through the DILP-CED, emergency employment through the CBEP, and alternative employment for the child workers’ families,” the Labor chief said.

For his part, Estrada, chairman of the Senate committee on labor, employment and human resource development and the Congressional Oversight Committee on Labor and Employment, cited the 2011 Survey on Children of the National Statistics Office showing that 5.59 million children aged five to 17 were already working. The figure, as news reports have it, represents 18.9 percent of the 29.019 million Filipino children under the same age bracket. Also from this number, 2.993 million were reported to be exposed to hazardous labor.