EconoMixPhilippines: Child labour: Northern Samar's provinicail govt in country to enact a local anti-child law replete with funding

The effort to move away from the use of chld-labour everywhere in the world, is not easily or quickly accomplished.  After reading and researching for years the grievous represson of free religious worship in Uzbekistan, I came across in a another source, new to me, of UZbekistan's closing of its schools and forcing children to go into the fields to harvest a huge crop of cotton every year, while it's busy closing down houses of worship that down conform to the govt's project of religious repression — whether Muslim other than the state's brand and regulated version, Protestant Christian (I think the Russian Orthodox have their special religious freedom, or Jehovah's Witnesses who are targets because their young men refuse military service of conscientious grounds.  Then, I thawt of a Protestant family which was enduring a raid because of house worship, and also was experiencing their school children being sent into the fields to pick cotton.

We don't find such combos in the Philippines, but that makes me wonder what is to happen to these children who are forbidden to work?  Where will they go during the day?  Are there schools ready for them?  Sufficient teachers skilled in bringing kids with no acculuration to schools and schooling, ready for those who are completely new to this non-family non-job requirement of adaptation?  I asked the same questions when FairFood launched a campaign to get the children fired from working in the cocao plantations of Africa (hard, gruelling, exhausting work to be sure), but the pittance they received in wages also contributed to their family income and to the respect they thus earned in the family and village.  And when the kids were prevented from working, what more amenable activities did they have? Schools? Trained teachers?  Most likely not.  Now they were simply economic drains on the family in far too many cases, I woud guess.  Did they become freelance garbage-pickers?  Did they become petty thieves?  Did they go off to become child soldiers?  I'm all for eliminating child labour; it's iniguitous.  But when eliminated, who's able to supply something positive for their formation and for their self-respect in their culture in this stage of developent?, as school hopefully woud be.  FairFood never responded.  It's a liberal Western set of priorities and far-fetched ethical choices in far too many cultural socioeconomic conditions.  Yet, again, coming back on the vicious circle,  where woud the children be 10 years from now with no schooling?

North Samar in the Philippines is not the same as the cocoa plantations of Africa, nor the cotton fields of Uzbekistan (where admirably there are schools).  The Philippines provincial governments which outlaw chld labour will soon learn that the cost is hi-er than they calculated, I'm afraid.  Because now they must face the need for universal schooling of chldren, and face the need for schooling of choice near to home and church, even in remote places.  The challenges of development are stupendous.

— EconoMix, refWrite Frontpage economics business labour newspotter, analyst, columnist
    with Lawt, refWrit Frontpage juridics


Inquirer News (Jan11,2k13)

Northern Samar enacts ordinance to stop child labor

By Tina G. Santos
Philippine Daily Inquirer

1:18 am | Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

MANILA, Philippines—The provincial government of Northern Samar has become the first provincial government unit in the country to enact a local anti-child labor ordinance, complete with an initial P1-million funding for its implementation, according to the Department of Labor and Employment (Philippines national/federal department).

“This shows how serious the provincial government officials are in eliminating child labor in their area of responsibility,” said Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz, who commended the provincial government officials for the initiative.

She also urged other local government units to emulate the provincial government’s act of support to the campaign to rid our country of the menace of child labor.

Baldoz noted that other provinces, such as Albay and Quezon, had used the ordinance as basis for crafting their own anti-child labor legislative proposals.

The Sangguniang Panlalawigan unanimously approved Provincial Ordinance No. 11 Series of 2012, entitled “An Ordinance Defining and Penalizing the Use of Child Labor and Providing for a Program for the Prevention and Progressive Elimination of Child Labor in Northern Samar and for other Purposes.”

The anti-child labor ordinance defines and penalizes the use of child labor and provides for a program on the prevention and elimination of child labor in Northern Samar. To support the program, the Sangguniang Panlalawigan approved an initial budget of P1 million for its implementation.

The ordinance also mandates the creation of municipal child labor committees and child labor protection desks in all police stations in the province to be manned by police officers who will receive complaints and problems and assist victims of child labor.

DOLE Region 8 Director Exequiel Sarcauga reported that 14 Northern Samar barangays (villages) have already passed barangay ordinances for the prevention and elimination of child labor practices.

Sarcauga explained that the child labor ordinances set the policies and guidelines at the provincial and barangay levels on how to curb child labor in their areas.

“An anti-child labor ordinance is one of the indicators of a barangay’s child-labor-free status under the child labor-free campaign.