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.