MORE than 90,000 children have been removed from doing harmful work since the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) started profiling child laborers.
Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said that the initiative is aimed at creating a database that will serve as a basis for providing appropriate services and interventions necessary to remove children from child labor.
The profiling is aligned with the Philippine Development Plan 2017–2022 goal of reducing child labor cases by 30 percent.
Since 2018, the labor department has already collected the key demographic information of over 400,000 child laborers nationwide.
The latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority estimated that 597,000 children are still engaged in child labor, mostly working in the agriculture sector.
Meanwhile, cases of online sex abuse and exploitation in children (OSAEC) spiked by 264 percent during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sexual exploitation is among the worst forms of child labor identified by the International Labour Organization.
To address the issue of poverty, the labor department provides several social amelioration packages for families of identified child laborers.
metrosundaily
