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+ February 15, 2021 CLARK FREEPORT The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has renewed its bid to free more than half a million children who are into child labor.
Lawyer Ma. Karina Trayvilla, director of the Bureau of Workers with Special Concerns, said that while DOLE has yet to receive latest official data on the number of young Filipinos engaged in child labor, the government is nonetheless bent on removing about 630,000 of them from such condition by 2022. We understand that one of the root causes of child labor is poverty, but we are doubling our efforts to eliminate this. We have encountered difficulties in the implementation of the program due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but now we are ready to intensify the profiling of children in the country, Trayvilla said.
MANILA, Feb. 14 The labor department renewed its bid to free more than half a million children who are into child labor and its worst forms amid reports that cases of child labor spiked despite the restrictions due to the pandemic.
Atty. Ma. Karina Trayvilla, director of the Bureau of Workers with Special Concerns, said that while DOLE has yet to receive latest official data on the number of young Filipinos engaged in child labor, the government is nonetheless bent on removing about 630,000 of them from such condition by 2022.
“We understand that one of the root causes of child labor is poverty, but we are doubling our efforts to eliminate this. We have encountered difficulties in the implementation of the program due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but now we are ready to intensify the profiling of children in the country,” Trayvilla said.
(MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)
“This is indeed unfortunate. This is why we had to work doubly hard to arrest the situation,” Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said in a statement Sunday.
Children and young workers are considered among the most vulnerable as the health crisis persists to affect the livelihood of mostly poor families in urban and rural areas.
The Labor department also reported assisting nearly 340,000 minors, along with their families, in an intensified implementation of the government’s child labor prevention and elimination program amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to DoLE, 293,318 were referred for assistance while more than 47,000 were removed from child labor.