Open enrollment program offered to child laborers

Cebu may be one of those areas in the country where child labor is rampant, but it will also be an area where change will start for its child laborers who now have the chance to study through the Open Enrollment Program of the Department of Education.

DepEd regional director Carolino Mordeno has established a partnership with World Vision Development Foundation, an international Christian development organization committed to uplift the lives of less fortunate people and communities in more than 90 countries worldwide.

World Vision partners with local people's organizations and other concerned agencies to implement projects that focus especially on the needs of children.

Mordeno, under a department memorandum he issued, has ordered schools to accept child laborers even in the middle of the grading period or even in late enrollment.

Under the open enrollment program, child laborers are given access to education in an open school basis wherein they can enroll at any public school they want in the region even in the middle of the school year.

Also, Mordeno was lauded yesterday at the 1st Media Summit on Child Labor for his move to educate child laborers through the Open Enrollment Program.

DepEd officer in charge Serena Uy of the Office of the Assistant Regional Director said that the program started last year and has already helped at least 3,266 child laborers in the province. Most of these children are in the cities of Lapu-Lapu and Cebu working in pyrotechnic factories and as commercial sex workers, respectively and in the municipalities of Oslob and Bogo as deep-sea divers and workers at sugarcane plantations, respectively.

Fe Segismar of the Christian Children's Fund-Cebu revealed that they already sent 83 children mostly from barangays Carreta, Pasil, Suba, Ermita and Lorega but only 56 of them finished their studies.

In Lapu-Lapu city, CCF has also helped over 900 children but only a few also have finished their studies.

Some of the assistance that have been provided to these children are school uniforms and supplies.

Child labor is one of the impending problems around the world where approximately 250 million children are engaged in different economic activities and exploitation according to reports from the International Labor Organization.

In the Philippines, statistics showed that an estimated 4 million Filipino children aged 5-17 years are economically active. Over half of them are exposed to the hazards, in which some are into the worst forms of labor including mining and quarrying, domestic labor, pyrotechnic production, commercial and sexual exploitation, deep sea fishing and sugarcane plantation. - Jasmin R. Uy