Govt wants more children emancipated from labor

THE Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has increased to 340,000 its target number of child laborers it expects to remove from the worst form of child labor in the next two years.

Bureau of Workers with Special Concerns ( BWSC) Director Maria Karina Perida-trayvilla told the Businessmirror they made the adjustment in consideration of the effects of the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on their anti- child labor efforts.

“We will adjust target for next 2 years. [The] target for 2021 is 195,000; for 2022 [it’s] 145,000,” Trayvilla said.

“The unmet targets will be carried over to next year,” she told the Businessmirror.

The or iginal target of DOLE under the Philippine Development Plan for 2021 and 2022 is 120,000 and 70,000, respectively.

For this year, Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said they were able to assist 340,000 child laborers and their families.

Of the said minors, 293,318 were referred for assistance to appropriate government agencies, while more than 47,000 were removed from child labor.

Tray villa admitted they were unable to meet their goal of securing 175,000 minors from child labor due to the limited mobility of their personnel and community facilitators due to quarantine restrictions.

“With this, DOLE shifted its focus on referring the profiled CLS [child laborers] to appropriate agencies for provisions of necessary services and monitoring of their progress,” Trayvilla said.

Nevertheless, Bello said they will continue their monitoring of child labor incidents especially during the pandemic.

“The pandemic has drawn children of poor families into some worst forms of child labor. This is indeed unfortunate. This is why we had to work doubly hard to arrest the situation,” Bello said in a statement.

DOLE is targeting to remove 630,000 minors from child labor by 2022.