New Palace executive order seen boosting DOLE’s targets vs anti-child labor

By Samuel P. Medenilla, Business Mirror, 3 Oct 2019

With the recent institutionalization of the National Council Against Child Labor (NCLC), the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said it now has a higher chance of addressing the backlog in its anti-child labor targets.

In a text message, DOLE’s Bureau of Workers with Special Concerns Director Ma. Karina Trayvilla said they are hopeful the issuance of Executive Order (EO) 92 will allow them to finally be on track on their goal to profile 560,000 child laborers by 2021.

“We are hopeful that we will be able to meet the target for 2020,” Trayvilla told the BusinessMirror in an SMS.

Under the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022, DOLE should be able to profile and assist 175,000 child laborers next year.

But as of June, DOLE was only able to profile 85,582 of its 265,000 target from 2017 to 2019.

Federation of Free Workers Vice President Julius Cainglet blamed this to the lack of institutionalization of the NCLC, which left anti-child labor programs not a priority agenda of the administration.

Prior to the issuance of EO 92, he said, the NCLC has “limited in mandate, resources and coordination as it operates under a mere memorandum of agreement [MOA] between and among its member government agencies, trade unions, employers and non government organizations [NGO].”

Trayvilla said one of the reason, why they are falling behind their profiling targets is the lack of funds for them to hire more community facilitators for it.

For 2019, she said, they were given P115 million for employing community facilitators.

But during the budget hearing of DOLE in Congress last month, it was revealed that only the Department of Budget and Management decided to cut the program’s funding by P100 million.

Trayvilla said they are optimistic the said removed budget will not only be restored, but even increased with the signing of EO 92.

“The EO will help ensure budget allocation and funding support; enhance coordination among partners; clarify responsibilities; further improve on data generation, sharing and analysis, and further intensify implementation,” Trayvilla said.