Child labor rampant in Cebu, DOLE says

Due to high incidence of child labor in Cebu, the Department of Labor and Employment chose it as among the priority areas for interventions.

Although DOLE did not give figures on how many children are working in Cebu, it is considered as among the "hot spots" for child prostitution where a number of kids are found working in pyrotechnics, prostitution, domestic labor, mining and quarrying, deep-sea fishing, and sugar cane plantations.

Last month, DOLE regional office and the International Labor Organization reported that there are 1,025 child laborers in Cebu, which only covered the areas of Bogo, Medellin, the cities of Cebu, Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue; Samboan, Santander, Ginatilan and Oslob, where there are reported cases of child labor. Labor officials said these only represent a small chunk of the real number of child laborers in Cebu.

Central Visayas also ranked second with highest number of child laborers in the country with 388,000 after southern Luzon which has 461,000 child laborers, most of whom are exposed to hazardous working conditions. The number still does not include prostituted children.

With the increasing number of child being exposed to hard labor at early ages, DOLE is conducting interventions and was able to remove some 12,500 children from the worst forms of child labor in 2003 and 2004.

The "rescued" kids were extended educational assistance under the Philippine Time Bound Program of the labor department.

In its recent report, DOLE's Bureau of Women and Young Workers said the children were among those who have been identified through the baseline surveys conducted in 2003 and 2004 by the International Labor Organization-International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor in the Philippines.

PTBP aims to reduce the worst forms of child labor by 75 percent by 2015 in six priority sectors - sugarcane plantations, pyrotechnics, deep-sea fishing, mining and quarrying, prostitution, and domestic labor.