Manila, QC top Metro cities with most number of child laborers, DOLE report says

By Samuel P. Medenilla, Business Mirror, 30 Oct 2019

Majority of the child laborers who were profiled by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) this year in Metro Manila worked as vendors or helpers.

This was the result of the mid-year report filed by the DOLE-National Capital Region (DOLE-NCR) from July to September.

Of the 7,301 profiled child laborers, 65.3 percent are working as vendors or helpers, while 24.3 percent are employed in the waste management sector.

The rest worked in the following industries: construction (3.7 percent); transportation and storage (3.2 percent); domestic work (2 percent); and manufacturing (1.5 percent).

“A total of 5,251 child laborers and their families were referred for necessary services with 27 of those children [from said figure] withdrawn from child labor,” Senior Labor and Employment Officer Aurora E. Halcon said in a news statement.

Among the intervention given by DOLE to the families of the child laborers includes self-employment (livelihood assistance), practical skills training, Balik Probinsya Program and Job Placement for the Family Members.

The profiled child laborers, who were aged between four to 17 years old, “are engaged in paid or self-employment to buy things for their school needs, help their family in attending to household chores or help their family/employer operate their small business.”

Three-fourths of them attend school and only a quarter are not attending school since they “cannot afford to go to school, not interested in school, school is too far, due to bullying, due to early pregnancy, lack of financial support/death of parents or teachers not supportive.”

Quezon City and Manila are the two cities with the highest profiled child laborers with 1,792 and 1,538, respectively.

The profiling is part of the DOLE’s initiative to help 175,000 child laborers by 2022.

As of June, DOLE was able to profile 85,582 child laborers.

Bureau of Local Employment (BLE) Director Dominique R. Tutay proposed the expansion of the profiling being conducted by DOLE to include senior citizens or persons with disability and enable DOLE to provide for their needs.

“We cannot provide assistance to them unless we could see the faces of the people with disability and senior citizens,” Tutay said.