Tags: Government Offices, Labor and Employment
By Marjorie Gorospe
QUEZON CITY, METRO MANILA— The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) is urging all provincial governors, city municipal leaders, and other local government executives to enact local laws that would address child labor at the community level.
A memorandum issued by DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo is also urging LGU executives to tap their respective Local Councils for the Protection of Children to lead in the implementation of programs that would help eliminate child labor.
A specific local ordinance, according to Robredo, would help address child labor in a particular locality. There are some 2.1 million working children aged 5 to 17 years old in the Philippines based on the 2005 survey conducted by the National Statistics Office.
About 40 percent of the total are elementary drop-outs, according to the NSO data.
Robredo also urges LGUs to implement Republic Act 9231, or the “Act Providing for the Elimination of Worst Forms of Child Labor and Affording Stronger Protection for the Working Child”, which stipulates the number of hours a child can work based on his or her age.
He also stressed that the unlawful refusal to implement the provisions of the law may constitute dereliction of duty and may give rise to administrative liability.
Compliance to the anti-child labor policy, said Robredo, would strengthen the government’s commitment to the International Labor Organization Convention 182 to reduce the worst forms of child labor in the country.
Article 3 of the ILO Convention 182 describes worst forms of child labor are all forms of practices similar to slavery such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom, as well as forced or compulsory labor.
This includes forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict; offering of child for prostitution, production of pornography or for pornographic performances; and the use of child for illicit activities such as production and trafficking of drugs (as defined in relevant international treaties); and work which by nature is likely to hazardous to the health, safety and morals of children.
(Photo courtesy of ILO)
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