MOST children in Bukidnon are not in the schools and malls but are instead in agricultural fields, sacadas, and business establishments working for at least 20 hours a week to supplement the income of their families.
Authorities said most of the children who are young as five years old work even at nighttime and under hazardous working conditions.
“The desire of these children to help their parents is very strong that from school or after waking up in the morning, they would go to fields in do manual work,” Erlinda Sayago, executive director of the Kaanib Foundation, an NGO, said.
Kaanib Foundation together with the Department of Labor and Employment-10 (Dole-10) and Child Fund Philippine are helping to decrease the number of child labor in Bukidnon and other Northern provinces.
According to the Dole-10 data, there are 14,790 child laborers working in Bukidnon’s agricultural fields; doing domestic work in business establishments, or running chores in rich families' houses in exchange for free schooling.
Of the 14,790 child laborers, some 8,386 are male, and 6,404 are female, the Dole-10 profiling data said.
“It's very hard to eradicate child labor in an economy relying on agriculture,” Dole-10 assistant regional Director lawyer Russel Jallorina said.
Jallorina said work is readily available in Bukidnon’s agricultural fields considered the food basket for Northern Mindanao and where poverty incidence is among the highest in the country.
Sayoga said aside from helping raise the income of their family, the children also look for work to pay for their school needs like notebooks and pens.
“When the schools went for online classes during the Covid-19 pandemic, it was hell for the children. Many opted to look for work instead of attending the online classes where they have to pay for the Internet,” Sayoga said.
The Dole-10 reported that in 2022, the province of Misamis Oriental had 10,382 child laborers; Lanao del Norte had 9,014 child workers; and Cagayan de Oro had 7,793.
The Philippine Statistics Authority in its statement last July 25, 2023, said 1.48 million are working children and 868,000 are considered to be child laborers.
The PSE said 15 out of every 100 child laborers came from Northern Mindanao which occupies the fourth largest population in the country.
