CEBU, Philippines — The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has removed more than 90,000 children from doing harmful work since it started profiling child laborers.
The profiling is aligned with the Philippine Development Plan 2017–2022 goal of reducing child labor cases by 30 percent.
The latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority estimated that 597,000 children are still engaged in child labor, mostly working in the agriculture sector.
Since 2018, the labor department has already collected the key demographic information of over 400,000 child laborers nationwide.
Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III, in a statement, said that the initiative is aimed at creating a database that will serve as a basis for providing appropriate services and interventions necessary to remove children from child labor.
Under the DOLE Integrated Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program (DILEEP), parents and/or guardians of profiled child laborers are qualified to avail the department’s livelihood program.
It aims to help withdraw the identified child laborers from child labor by way of providing their families alternative livelihood projects.
In 2001, DOLE-7 has released over P4.6 million to parents of profiled child laborer in Barili, Cebu
DOLE-7 said that around 153 parents of child laborers coming from the different barangays of Barili benefited the livelihood program and received not less than P29,000.00 each for their respective Livelihood Started Kits (LSKs).
The beneficiaries who came from barangays Candugay, Cagay, San Rafael, and Azucena are engaged in goat raising, cattle fattening, general merchandizing, buy and sell and candle vending as well as frozen food products and hanging rice livelihood projects. — FPL (FREEMAN)