Noah's Vessel

6 WORST FORM OF CHILD LABOR

Mining and Quarrying

Labor-intensive, based on improvised low level technologies and methods
OSH and environmental issues linked
Long hours, heavy loads, exposure to dust and chemicals (especially mercury), cave-ins

Domestic work

Separated from their own families
Work 15 hours a day, with or without wage
Minimum wage is less than $15/month
Vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse
90% are girls
Some trafficked for labor/sexual exploitation

Pyrotechnics production

High risk of injuries or loss of life due to highly flammable and combustible substances
Complaints of dizziness, asthma, weight loss, sore eyes and backaches
For 1,000 pieces of baby rockets, a child earns less than $1 a day
Fixed salaried collect an average of 40 cents to $2 a day

Commercially and sexually exploited

Young girls are prevalent but boys are increasing
Many recruited from rural poor to work in urban areas, and abroad

Deep-sea fishing

Work 12 to 15 hours a day, starting 3am
Pa-aling fishing trips take children away from families 9 to 10 months. Families receives cash advance in return
Cuts, wounds, skin diseases, sore eyes and exhaustion
Decompression symptoms, and harsh weather conditions at sea, high level of noise from mechanical machines
Drowning and other underwater hazards

Sugarcane plantation

Child workers in sugar plantations mainly children of sugar workers and peasants, living on and around haciendas
Children are involve in all aspects of cane growing, harvesting and hauling
64% of the children working on sugarcane plantation are studying, but drop out from the school during the year
off-season peril: vulnerable to recruiters who lure them to metro manila and abroad

CHILD LABOR IN THE PHILIPPINES

4 million (16.2%) of 25 million children aged 5-17 years old were economically active.
2.2 million were in hazardous work.
Over 50% of the total numbers of child laborer are 5-14 years of age. Median age is just 10 years, that is 50% are aged 10 years and below.
The highest percentage of working children came from southern tagalong (11.5%), followed by Central Visayas (9.7%) and Eastern Visayas (8.7%).
The working children were composed of children aged 10-14 years old (1.9 million or 48%) and 15-17 years old (1.8 million or 46%).
There were more male working children (2.5 million or 62.3%) than female working children (1.5 million or 36.6%). Seven out of ten working children resided in the rural areas.
25.1% of the children worked in the evening or during night time. The proportion of children working during night time in the urban areas (39%) was greater than that in the rural areas (19%); more males than females.
More than half of the total number of the children surveyed (51.2% or 2 million) worked between 1 to 4 hours a day.
Over third of the children worked from 5 – 8 hours in a day and the remaining 9% worked for more than 8 hours per week.
About 2.4 million of working children were exposed to physical and chemical hazards and were in physical and biologically hazardous working places. 23% suffered from work-related injuries.
One third of working children did not attend school. Seven in every ten working children (65.9% or 2.6 million) attended school.
34% of these children dropped out from school and 22% reported that their work interferes with their schooling.
Two in every five working children stopped/dropped out of school. The ratio or male working child to female working children in terms of dropouts was 2:1.
Reasons given for dropping out school include loss of interest (31.4%), and high cost of schooling (28.3%).