By Tyrone A. Velez
Davao Today
Davao City – Winners of today’s barangay election in three of the city’s industrial barangays face the tough job of sustaining the campaign against child labor.
Joefel Soco-Carreon, program officer of Kaugmaon (the Cebuano word for future) Foundation pointed out that incumbent punong barangays (barangay captains) in Ilang, Callawa and Panacan would finish their terms.
A high number of child labor cases were found in these areas, in a city where there is an average of 100 working children for each of the 182 villages, the group said.
Kaugmaon’s program in these villages, including the Tibungco village, includes helping 338 child workers, aged seven to 17, who worked as vendors, scavengers, factory or farm workers.
Kaugmaon executive director Florie Butiong-Tacang said their campaign has only reached ten per cent success in minimizing child labor working on hazardous conditions.
Their study showed cases where children worked in packing urea fertilizer in a refinery, and others cleaning bottles for a recycling plant. In both cases, children worked without protective gear and even worked overnight for days.
“The challenge is for the community to be aware and point out these cases of exploitation,” Tacang said.
Outgoing barangay and Barangay Council for the Protection of Children (BCPC) officials also shared Kaugmaon’s sentiments that the program needs to be continued to address the problem of child workers.
Having new officials in barangays would also mean having a new composition for the BCPC and this means re-introducing the program and starting all over again.
Aning Nerosa, a purok leader and BCPC member of Barangay Tibungco, said she finds the program had made strides among stakeholders in her area.
“When I go to the market in the morning, manangpit sila (the children would greet me). Then I would check on them, see if they have eaten their meals already, that they are wearing slippers or taken bath before coming to the market,” Nerosa said.
Most children in the market are engaged in selling food or fried bananas, collecting garbage or doing errands.
Nerosa said monthly meetings with the children, parents and other village members helped in forming values to uphold children’s rights.
“Candidates said they would adapt Kaugamon’s program. Actually it’s a barangay program, and it’s important that this will be continued. That’s the important thing. As for me, I will commit myself as a child advocate,” Nerosa said.
Another official, Nelda Sabigon, a kagawad and co-chair of the BCPC of Barangay Callawa, also said it would be a challenge for the new officials to continue this program.
She shared her experience wasn’t easy in the beginning as fellow councilors at first thought children working in farms harvesting bananas or fishing does not constitute as child labor.
Children in Callawa, the lone agricultural barangay in the second district, worked in banana farms and earn 60 pesos a day.
“They (children and farmers) work as early as four a.m. until eight. And they get to work because their pay is cheaper,” said Sabigon.
“It’s really in our culture that a child helping the family is a good thing. Even with my fellow officials, they don’t think (farm work) is child labor,” Sabigon said.
Davao City was a Presidential Awardee last 2012 for the Most Child Friendly City in the highly-urbanized category.
Based on the 2000 Census, there are already up to four million Filipino child laborers. In Davao City, Kaugmaon estimated 18,000 child laborers in the city.
Based on the website of the International Labor Organization, “child labor” is defined as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.” (Tyrone A. Velez, davaotoday.com)
barangay election 2013, Child Labor, Child labor in Davao City, Kaugmaon Foundation
