ANOTHER WAR—as deadly as that in Maguindanao—wastes the
Filipino children today: the war of poverty. The increasing number
of children forced to go to work indicates a bankrupt economy, according
to the Center for Women's Resources (CWR), a research and training
institute.
Citing NSO figures, CWR emphasizes that almost half of the four million
children working are aged 10-14 years old while almost 250,000 are
aged five to nine. Many of them sell sampaguita, cigarettes, or rags
in the street, serve as house help, or till the land together with
their family.
CWR also reveals that only 45% of the working children are within
the government's defined working age of 15 - 17.
"This is disturbing because children from five to nine years
of age are still in their crucial period, in need of all the mental
and physical nurturing that they could get. Instead of going to school,
they work in lowly unskilled jobs that pay them very little or nothing
at all," states CWR Executive Director Gertrudes Libang.
Libang adds that 66% or 2.6 million of children toil as laborers
and unskilled workers in dangerous workplaces like sweatshops, firecracker
factories, or in mines in the Cordilleras or Mindanao. A million receive
their pay irregularly with just 6.3% getting a monthly wage. About
2.5 million working children belong to the unpaid workers category.
"This reflects the reality that they work to augment their family's
income since wages of the adults are not enough to make ends meet,”
explains Libang.
With inflation that erodes the purchasing power of peso to 59 centavos,
a parent who works with a minimum income of P280 in NCR could only
provide 52% of the calculated P533 daily cost of living.
CWR warns that with the consistent decline of the economy produces
more impoverished families, which will definitely increase the number
of child workers.
The issue on Child Labor is part of the CWR study that was presented
in the ULAT LILA forum on February 28 at Balay Kalinaw, UP, Diliman.
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