The view from the ground

Last Thursday, the Laura Vicuna Foundation commemorated its Children’s Center in Victorias City with the National Policy Conference for the Protection and Development of Child Laborers in the Sugar Industry.

Sisters of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians are managing the center.

Undersecretary for Workers’ Protection and Welfare Luzviminda Padilla delivered the keynote speech.

The LVF center aims to create a deeper understanding of the issues concerning child labor in sugarcane plantations, and shares its innovative and action-oriented, child-sensitive programs and services to liberate child laborers, their families and the community from the economic and social costs with the support of their social partners.

It also seeks to create opportunities in forging social contracts with the key players in the farm management, NGO and PO partners, educational institutions and the Catholic Church.

Finally, it recommends double child-sensitive policy issues and programs to alleviate families from abject poverty and create opportunities to allow them to realize their dreams of a better future.

Padilla came out with a jarring or startling report that working children between five and 17 years old could be found in three out of 10 Philippine households.

The ratio, Padilla said, is equivalent to three million Philippine households with working children.

She cited the findings of the Philippine Survey on Children of 2001, which showed that five- to 17-year-old working children numbered four million out of the total 25 million Filipino children.

Of the total, three million are in the rural areas; two percent or 2.1 million in agriculture, hunting and forestry; and 49.5 percent in farms.

But there was another side to the situation. Child work is usually family work, Padilla said, pointing out that 60 percent or 2.4 percent were unpaid workers in their own family-operated farms or businesses.

The survey also showed that the 2.4 million working children were exposed to biological hazards such as viruses, bacteria and parasites and to extreme temperatures and chemical hazards like dust, mist and fumes.

"Child labor in the Philippines is widespread, but is more pervasive in agriculture. Considered the last bastion of plantation agriculture, sugar production is especially kept under tight watch because of the industry’s need for intensive labor," Padilla stressed.

But she did not state anything about what the sugar industry has been doing to alleviate the conditions and address the problem of child laborers.

It took DOLE regional director Carlos Boteros to remind Padilla that the sugar producers have also been taxing themselves to address the problem. The first is the social amelioration program, the only one of its kind in any other industry. This means a compulsory levy of P10 per lkg of sugar. And 80 percent of the amount collected by DOLE is returned as mid-year and Christmas bonuses to farm and mill workers.

The rest is divided between the Bureau of Rural Workers and the Sugar Industry Foundation Inc. (the social outreach implementing arm of the industry), and for other benefits such as death and delivery benefits to workers and their dependents.

But aside from the educational assistance program and livelihood projects of the SIFI, Boteros pointed out that individual planters and planters’ associations have put up foundations to help their workers. This means additional levies on members, either voluntary or compulsory. He cited the case of SIMAG and the Buasdamlag, among others. Members of both foundations contributed an additional P3 per lkg to fund social outreach projects. Most of these involved livelihood enterprises, which provide farm workers with additional income.

Others have their own shelter programs for their employees. The latest are projects tied up with Gawad Kalinga. Incidentally, Boteros cited our experience in Thailand whose sugar farmers were surprised to learn about the social amelioration program and additional projects of the Philippine sugar industry for its workers.

For example, the social cost of plantation workers is borne out by Filipino sugar farmers. They often end up covering the off-milling pay of their workers who end up doing odd jobs when they virtually have nothing to do in the plantations. Some individual planters or planters’ foundations provide them with alternative sources of livelihood or skills training.

SIFI has also embarked on the same project. It has graduated 5,112 people in vocational training and 3,555 others in technical skills, Edith Villanueva, SIFI president, pointed out.

In short, the view from the ground is quite different from the clinical and dispassionate perception from above of what is going on.

Finally stung by the seeming disregard for what they have been doing for their workers, sugar producers finally decided this week to motivate their foundations to come up with their respective performance reports. Not to glorify what they have been doing but to set the record straight, commented Roberto Cuenca, a sugar farmer in the La Carlota and La Castellana area.

Cuenca recently bristled when he was called by a writer of a Manila daily as a former Marcos crony.

Cuenca, one of the most respected and forward-looking sugar producers, served as a provincial board member under former Negros Occidental Gov. Alfred Montelibano Jr.

But he never made a fortune from his position neither could he be called a Marcos crony. His late father, Fernando Cuenca, was former head of the Philippine Sugar Institute (PHILSUGIN) and also Lions District 301-B governor.

Not only that. Cuenca went out of his way to offer for voluntary sale his sugar farm Hda. Velez-Malaga. He has organized his workers into a cooperative to which he sold his farm and farm equipment lock, stock and barrel. The only problem was the questionable inclusion of "outsiders" as beneficiaries who were vocal in denouncing Cuenca and his laudable move.

That’s why, it is best for the people on top to see the situation on the ground for themselves before making pronouncements or making their own conclusions about what’s going on outside the four walls of their air-conditioned offices.

Finis to WNC nurses’ controversy

Apparently, the prolonged row between the nursing graduates of the Negros College of Bacolod and the Board of Nursing (BON) and the Professional Regulations Commission has reached the finish line.

WNC vice president Ernesto Arbolario said all the nursing graduates who passed the December 2005 examinations were allowed to take their oaths and process their nursing licenses.

Last Thursday, according to Arbolario, 254 nursing board passers took their oaths at the Business Inn in Bacolod, while 151 others took theirs in Iloilo City.

But there were 65 board passers from Dumaguete and Cebu who failed to attend the oathtaking administered by the Board of Nursing under Remedios Fernandez.

Arbolario added that some of the WNC passers had taken their oaths right after passing the December 2005 exams but were made to answer the charges filed against them by the BON.

But to sort of highlight their success in their four-month joust with the PRC and the BON, Arbolario said WNC plans to have a mass ceremonial oathtaking and induction of the 476 WNC nursing board passers tentatively set for next week.

But more importantly, that wrote finis to a controversy that prompted Congress to denounce the PRC for allegedly trying to overrule the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). All’s well that ends well.

ADDENDA. Antique recently received funding assistance for its Early Childhood Care and Development Expansion Program of the Council for the Welfare of Children. This three-year program received P16.5 million from the national council, with P7 million to be put up as counterpart by the local communities. Antique Gov. Sally Zaldivar-Perez said the seven towns chosen by ECCD are Belison, Aniniy, Valderrama, Sebaste, Caluya, Libertad, and Tibiao… Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla will inaugurate the P140-million Panay-Boracay interconnection project. National Transmission Corp. information officer Cora Dureza said the project is the first phase of Transco’s Small Island Interconnection Development Program. Transco completed the laying of the 1.6-kilometer submarine cable, which will connect Transco’s entire cable terminal in Caticlan and Manok-Manok, Boracay.