Monday, September 08, 2008 Deal inked to help end child labor
IN AN effort to bring back to school more than 800,000 Filipino children currently toiling as laborers in various parts of the country, the Department of Education (DepEd) has inked an agreement with the World Vision Development Foundation (WVDF), stepping up the campaign to put an end to child labor.
Dubbed the "ABK2 Initiative", or the Pag-aaral ng mga Bata para sa Kinabukasan, the agreement calls on DepEd and WVDF to jointly raise public awareness and mobilize resources and support to combat child labor and promote school attendance.
"Our children are supposed to be in school and not on the streets or in sweatshops working under horrible conditions," said Education Secretary Jesli Lapus during the signing.
ABK2 is a four-year project funded by the United States Department of Labor that aims to contribute to the reduction of exploitative child labor in the Philippines.
According to Elnora Avarientos, executive director of WVDF, the six identified sectors where child labor is particularly rampant in the Philippines are in commercial agriculture (sugarcane plantation), domestic work, pyrotechnics business, mining, quarrying, sex trade and scavenging.
Lapus said DepEd would provide support to the project in the form of policy and technical advice that will provide child laborers access to quality and relevant education programs.
Based on the 2007 sub-regional multiple indicator cluster survey conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) in 2007, about 830,000 children in the Philippines, or 16 percent of all school-age children, are classified as child laborers. Of these, about 670,000 children both attend school and work as child laborers.
The NSO estimates that there are currently four million child laborers in the Philippines and that more than half are involved in abusive or dangerous work.
About 30 percent of the child laborers do not have any schooling.
In a report released last June, the International Labor Organization (ILO) noted a sharp drop in school enrolment saying it is alarmed by the decline in the participation rate or enrolment from 6.77 percent in 2000 to 2001 to 83.22 percent in 2006 to 2007.
The rate is the lowest in seven years, the ILO noted.
The National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) echoed the ILO's report saying that the country is still far from its goal of providing education for all.
It added that this could impact the government's target under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that all Filipino children will have access to basic education by 2015.
The NCSB said out of the 17 regions of the country, Western Visayas was the worst performer. In the region, 25 percent of children ages six to 11 years old were not going to elementary school. This translated to a net enrollment ratio of 75 percent.
The best performer was the National Capital Region (NCR), where only 7.1 percent of elementary-age children were not in school, posting a net enrollment ratio of 92.9 percent.
The number of Filipino youths aged 12 to 15 who were not able to attend high school stood at 41.4 percent of their population, translating to a net enrollment ratio of 58.5 percent.
Among the reasons cited for the decline in the participation rates includes poverty and high cost of education, distance of schools from residence, lack of school within the place, no regular transportation, illness, lack of interest and the need to find work to help the family.
Another is the presence of armed conflict especially in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm) where the illiteracy rate is the highest in the country.
Lapus added that even if poverty is the major cause for such a sorry situation, these children, undeniably remain the responsibility of DepEd.
"We are accountable to them in terms of their education. This is one of our major concerns," added Lapus.
DepEd has vigorously pursued non-traditional programs to increase the participation and retention rates of school children, especially those burdened by difficult circumstances.
This includes the "Child Find" program, which is focused on reaching the "un-reached" children who are out of school. DepEd is also holding multi-grade classes. It now has 24,882 such classes all over the country.
The multi-grade class is where students of different grade levels are handled by a single teacher. "It not only provides access to education for children who are otherwise out of school, it also addresses the quality of education we provide to this sector," said Assistant Secretary Teresita Inciong. (AH/Sunnex)
