Iloilo, Negros Occidental have worst child labor problems
Iloilo is one of the eight provinces in the country that are in the priority list in the US$7.8 million ABK Initiative project in order to combat its worst child labor problem. Iloilo comprised a portion of the estimated four million children aged five to 17 who are working.
Apart from Iloilo, the provinces of Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Bulacan, Camarines Norte, Cebu, Davao and Metro Manila are also in the priority list. Out of the four million children who are into child labor, 2.4 million Filipino working children are exposed to hazards. Many also work under worst forms of child labor.
The six forms of worst child labor in the country today are children who are in mining and quarrying, deep-sea fishing, and pyrotechnics production, which are highly dangerous. The other three worst forms of child labor are commercial sexual exploitation and children working in sugar plantation and domestic work.
In the light of these alarming report, these eight provinces are put in the priority target of ABK Initiative. ABK Initiative is a child labor project of World Vision, the lead agency along with its partners, the Christian Children's Fund (CCF), Educational Research and Development Assistance Foundation Inc. (ERDA) and Plan Philippines. These implementing agencies are collectively called as the National Coalition for Children's Participation (NCCP).
ABK stands for Pag-aaral ng Bata para sa Kinabukasan or Education for the Children's Future. ABK is a US$7.8 million project implemented since August 2003 and will end on March 2008. The funding for this worthy project is provided by the US Department of Labor (USDOL) under cooperative agreement No. E-9-K-3-0055 with counterpart funding from implementing agencies.
The objectives of the project are to increase awareness on the negative effects of child labor and importance of education and attitudes that result in delaying education, withdrawing children from school or permitting participation in worst form of child labor are altered, increase access to and quality of formal and non-formal education, improve quality of formal and non-formal education and establish alternative livelihood programs for families and youth over 15 years.
For the school year 2004-2005, a total of 12,253 children were enrolled in various schools in the provinces assisted by the ABK Initiative. Of the total enrollees, 12 percent completed their program while 86 percent enrolled for the current school year (2005-2006) along with more than 13,000 new enrollees.
These number of children sent to school through ABK Initiative constitute only a small portion of the number of children who did not attend school. In 2001 alone, the National Statistics Office (NSO) Survey on Children showed that 1.3 million or one third of the working children did not attend school and 1.2 million or 44.8 percent of those children who attended school encountered problems such as difficulty in catching up with the lessons, high costs of schooling, unsupportive teachers, lack of time to study and far distance of school from residence.