Child labor? Schoolboy extracts, hauls sand and gravel for money

CLARIN, BOHOL , Philippines   â€”  Child labor is reportedly being practiced at the river’s sand extraction business initiated by enterprising families, some of whom were earthquake victims, at Barangay Candajec of this town, about 70 kilometers north of Tagbilaran City.

Adults working here have denied there is “child labor” among sand gathering workers. They only admitted they have no proof of legal permit for them to extract and haul river deposits, a form of livelihood that they claimed has been by municipal government officials.

But they lied. Two male juveniles were found by The Freeman, in a site visit last week, to be working here, extracting sand or even gravel and selling these to the stockyard.

Hard life may have driven “Randy” (real name withheld), a grade-schooler, into this dangerous and dirty job. He is one of the workers of 45 families who are now dependent on manual sand extraction and stone-crushing venture here.

Randy, clad only with muddied shorts and a pair of slippers that exposed his slim fragile build, trod on the river bank while carrying on his shoulder an apparently heavy half-full sack of sand that he earlier extracted by shovel from the bed of the knee-deep river.

Unmindful of the heat of the sun, he negotiated the river bank’s passageway up to unload his cargo into a stockyard, where fissures, as result of the magnitude 7.2 earthquake, were evident.

Randy was an extrovert who showed no inhibition and was straightforward in answering questions from The Freeman, during an exclusive interview. He revealed he was 12 years old, and the youngest of four children whose mother (name withheld) was a housewife and that his father already deceased.

He said he did not attend his class on that day of the interview because he must work to help the family. At times he attended classes for only a half day and proceeded later to his job in the river.

Randy’s work earned for him P8 per can of sand sold, but only when sales are brisk, which never happens every day. His daily earnings were way below than what his older co-workers raked in from the sand extraction. 

Fifteen of the families reside in the area, shoveling mineral deposits, hauling and selling them every day for two years since to buy for their daily sustenance, according to the workers’ group leader Jacinto Tisoy said in a separate interview.

Another 30 families, who were from Brgy. Ubujan of the neighboring Tubigon town, were engaged in stone gathering and crushing with the use of hammer in the same area, group leader Charlene “Cheche” Cosare told The Freeman.

Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (PENRO) officer-in-charge forester Nestor Canda of the DENR visited the place recently to try to resolve the workers’ predicament of having no permit.

Canda suggested to the group’s leaders to organize and avail themselves of the services of the Bohol Environment Management Office (BEMO) of the provincial government in securing permit.

The group in turn thanked Canda and vowed to organize themselves and obtain sand extraction permits from the BEMO for approval by the governor.  (FREEMAN)