DOLE 12 Intensifies Campaign against Child Labor and Trafficking

Child labor has been an extensive predicament all over the country for many years. Although the government has increased efforts to address it and provide laws for worker rights, child labor and trafficking were still a serious problem.
Here in Region 12, the government intensified its campaign against child labor and trafficking through the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) which has launched a series of career guidance and counseling caravans in the different schools particularly in Tacurong City last week. This is in part of their region-wide advocacy drive in a bid to reduce the increasing number of child workers and cases of trafficking involving women and children. They have tapped the Public Employment Service Office Managers Association in Sultan Kudarat province (PESO-MASK) to help in its advocacy campaign in the area.
The program already covered more than 800 students, who were mainly apprised on the salient features of Republic Acts (RA) 9231, or the law on the elimination of the worst forms of child labor and RA 9208 or the law on anti-trafficking in persons. She said other topics discussed during the advocacy sessions, which is also supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund’s Sixth Country Program for Children, were child pornography and the Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS). Tango said they focused the program in Sultan Kudarat province as it is reportedly considered the source of women and child trafficking in the region.
DOLE Regional director Ma. Gloria Tango said that the advocacy is part of the agency’s continuing crackdown against the rampant employment of minors especially in high risking job and work places. “The Province of Sultan Kudarat has been one of the source and destination points of trafficked women and children in the Region,” she noted in a press statement. “But through the efforts of the agency’s Sagip Batang Manggagawa program, we had successfully rescued a number of child laborers and trafficked women and children that led to the filing of several cases in local courts.” Tango added. s
According to reports brought to DOLE, thousands of children were exposed to hazardous working environments such as quarries, mines and at docksides in order to earn their living. Other children were also getting involved in drugs as courier at a very young age. There were also reports of forced and indentured labor in some parts of the region and the use of under age workers in domestic servitude where children ages 17 years old or younger were already engaged in domestic works. Recruiters bring girls between the age of 13 and 17 to work in Manila or other big cities under terms that involved a “loan”, payment in advance given to their parents that these poor children are obliged to repay through work. Often times, these practices involving young females trafficked by recruiters fall into sexual exploitation.
DOLE Region 12 earlier placed the number of child laborers in the region at around 400,000. Most of the working children aged 17 years old and below in the region were reportedly employed as agricultural workers, laborers in warehouses and public markets, domestic helpers and street vendors. Not counting the reports of some minors who were into prostitution and laborers in small-scale mining activities in the region.