DUMAGUETE CITY, Negros Oriental, June 20 (PIA) -- The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) here together with the Dumaguete City government has intensified its bid to free children involved in child labor in the city.

Under the five-year Profiling of Child Laborers program which started in 2019, more than 200 children have been identified as child laborers out of 1,074 children profiled in the city.

DOLE Provincial Director Ma. Teresa Taquiamco, in a Kapihan sa PIA forum, said “the profiling is a way of knowing where are these children, how many are they now, and what are their involvement so that the agencies concerned can continue its interventions and remove the children from hazardous conditions to eliminate child labor.”

The city has validated the data and it came out that these children are engaged in economic activities.

Taquiamco said the children below 17 years old are mostly engaged in work related to construction or hauling of sand and gravel, fishing, farming, domestic works, selling peanuts nightly at the boulevard, among others. 

Under Republic Act No. 9231, child labor refers to any work or economic activity performed by a child that subjects him to any form of exploitation or harmful to his health, physical, mental, or psychosocial development.

Parents of child laborers have been provided livelihood assistance by the city government especially those identified living along the river banks where children are engaged in hauling sand and gravel in barangays Candau-ay, Cadawinonan, Batinguel, Camanjac, and Calindagan.

The worst forms of child labor include slavery such as the sale and trafficking of children, exposing a child for prostitution or the production of pornography, offering of a child for illegal activities such as production, and trafficking of dangerous drugs.

Currently, the labor department in partnership with other agencies is gearing up its Child Labor Prevention and Elimination Program to achieve a child labor-free Philippines.

With this, anti-child labor agency advocates regularly hold various advocacy campaigns in line with the observance of the World Day Against Child Labor and 124th Philippine Independence Day on June 12, 2022. (JCT/PIA7 Negros Oriental)