ILO urges businesses to avoid child labor

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines —The International Labor Organization (ILO) has urged businesses to avoid hiring minors in their work force as plans to eliminate child labor practice in the country gains ground. 

ILO country director Khalid Hassan said business operators, especially in the agriculture sector, have the obligation to check and verify if they are employing children in their operations.

He said firms should have the ability “to monitor practices up to the lowest level of the supply chain” to ensure that no children are being employed. 

The issue on child labor was the topic in a forum attended by industry players, child protection advocates and local government officials organized by the provincial government of Misamis Oriental, in partnership with the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines and Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco Corp. at the Luxe Hotel here.

The forum was aimed at “promoting good agriculture practices including taking children out of the farms because the sustainability of any business operation hinges in large part on its labor condition.” 

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed there are some 2.1 million child laborers aged 5-17 years old in the country as of 2011. 

Around 95 percent of these children are engaged in hazardous work and 69 percent are below the minimum allowable age for work. Fifty-eight percent of these child laborers are found in the agriculture sector.

“The Philippines, as its contribution to (Social Development Goals), has launched a new Philippine Program Against Child Labor (PPACL) with the goal of withdrawing one million child laborers by 2025. This is enshrined in the Philippine Development Plan and different stakeholders are in the midst of creating the system to target these children all over the country,” Hassan said.

He said ILO in the Philippines is also targeting hard-to-reach forms of child labor that exist in remote rural areas and co-exist with agricultural practices.

“We are now implementing a project addressing child labor and poor working conditions in artisanal and small scale gold mining. Our approach here is the creation of an environment that better transition units and workers in this sector from informality, where different negatives practices abound, to formality, where regulation can better be exercised and greater compliance with standards achieved,” he added.

Hassan said it is imperative for companies, from small-scale ones to huge corporations, “to go beyond the rhetoric” and strictly monitor their operations at the community level to check if they have child laborers in their work force.