MANILA — The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has issued guidelines on the profiling of child laborers in a bid to draw them away from illegal practice and its worst forms.
In an order issued last week, DOLE Secretary Silvestre Bello III directed the department’s field offices to consolidate data from their social partners for the identification and profiling of the target child laborers to assess their needs.
“Given the insufficient data on child laborers, it is necessary to first conduct nationwide profiling of the target child laborers and their families which will serve as a basis for the provision of appropriate services and interventions necessary to remove the children from child labor,” he said in a statement.
The profiling of target child laborers will come from the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and through the Community Based Monitoring System implemented by various local government units.
Child labor refers to any work or economic activity performed by children under 18 years of age that subject them to any form of exploitation or is harmful to their health and safety or physical, mental, or psychological development.
Based on the 2011 survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority, an estimated 2.1 million children aged 5 to 17 years were engaged in child labor, 97.7 percent of whom were in hazardous child labor.
However, the data do not provide names and location of the child laborers.
DOLE, as the lead agency in the implementation of the Philippine Program against Child Labor, and as the chair of the National Child Labor Committee, is responsible for the monitoring and reporting if a child is already removed from child labor.
These initiatives are aligned to the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022, which targets to reduce the cases of child labor by 30 percent or 630,000 from the estimated 2.1 million child laborers nationwide. (Ferdinand Patinio/PNA)
