Child workers rise to 5 M

MANILA, Philippines - The number of child workers in the country has increased, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported yesterday.

“As of October 2011, there are 5.49 million working children aged five to 17 years. More than 55.1 percent or 3.02 million were counted as child labor while 2.99 million are exposed to hazardous form of child labor,” Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said, citing results of a recent survey by the National Statistics Office (NSO).

NSO administrator Carmencita Ericta said a majority of child workers are employed in the agriculture sector.

Ericta said the rest can be found in mining sites, quarrying, factories and construction, while a number may be possibly engaged in the flesh trade.

“As they grow older, these working children tend to drop out of school. With the younger age group, five to nine, about 90 percent are in school, but by the time they reach 15, only half of them are in school,” Ericta said.

The International Labor Organization defines child labor as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity that is harmful to physical and mental development.

In extreme forms, child labor involves children being enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards and illnesses and/or left to fend for themselves on the streets of large cities, often at a very early age.

Baldoz said they are surprised with the results of the NSO survey, involving 50,000 families nationwide.

“I was wondering why it (number of child workers) increased, considering that anti-child labor programs have been implemented since 1995 and we have never stopped doing so,” Baldoz said.

“Together with the ILO, we want to go back and find out what happened in the past, but I think this will be good for the administration to use as a baseline to work towards our goal to reduce child labor in the country by 75 percent in four years,” she said.

The labor chief, however, expressed confidence that the government would still be able to meet its target to reduce the number of child laborers in the country.

She said the government has identified 609 poorest municipalities where the government will focus the anti-child labor campaign.

A municipality where there is high incidence of child labor, Baldoz said, was classified as poor because children are forced to work instead of going to school because of poverty.

“We have already started with our first 80 poor barangays where we intend to have zero child labor by the end of the year. We will do it one barangay at a time,” she said.

Baldoz said the latest NSO survey cannot be compared to the 2001 poll, which placed the number of child workers at four million.

“Our NSO experts said that they have used a different methodology and a bigger sample size and these factors can make a difference,” she said.

Ericta, for her part, said the latest survey was more detailed with more questions being asked of the respondents.

“From only two in 2001 survey, in 2011 we asked seven questions, so this probably enabled us to catch more working children and this could have caused the increase in number,” she said.

The population of children aged five to 17 years also rose by 1.56 percent from a decade ago, she added.

“The increase may not be attributed solely to population growth, but this is part of the reason. Although we are not also trying to deny that there might also be an increase in number of child workers,” Ericta said.

ILO country director Lawrence Johnson told a forum that unveiled the survey that the root cause of child labor is poverty.

“No parent wants to mortgage (his or her child’s) future,” he said.

Johnson said fighting child labor is not just a role of the government, but also of the employers, workers’ organizations and local communities.

He said there has been progress in efforts to reduce child labor worldwide, but the global pace of reduction is slowing down as the world gets closer to the deadline of ending the worst forms of child labor by 2016.