Saturday, June 16, 2007 Gov't agency helpless to resolve child labor in agriculture By Carlo P. Mallo
CHILD labor in the agricultural sector has been one of the longest running forms of abuses against children.
But the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) can't do anything about it as it is not the landlords or plantation companies who employ the children. It's the parents who drag their children to work with them.
"The war is not legal. It transcends the social and cultural aspects of the family and society," Dole Southern Mindanao director Ponciano Ligutom said Thursday.
The common trend is that parents of the child would usually talk to plantation owners, particularly till sugarcane, for them to harvest the produce.
The children plunged into labor are often tagged as the silent laborers, hardly would anyone hear them complain about their plight.
The culture and psyche of the Filipino, that there ought to be more children in order for the parents to have more helpers in the farmland, is one notion that Vic Magallanes, Davao coordinator of the International Labor Organization (ILO), wants to correct.
Magallanes said apart from not being able to go to school, the children are also exposed to the hazards of doing hard labor.
He said the only way to resolve the problem of child labor is to resolve the underlying problem of poverty.
Ligutom reiterated the concern of Magallanes. He said as long as the government is not able to provide basic services and quality education, the problem of child labor and poverty would remain.
"The concern of alleviating the children from child labor is not the concern of the government alone, but should be the concern of every Filipino," Ligutom said.
