WORLD Vision Philippines, the Erda Group and Child Fund Philippines jointly conducted a forum on child protection policies and children’s rights Tuesday at the Four Season Hotel in Iloilo City.

Attended by more than 200 selected children in the province and city of Iloilo, the forum is a definite social action plan to protect the rights of children, said Daphne Culanag, project director of Pag-aaral ng Bata para sa Kinabukasan II (ABK2) Initiative of World Vision.

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Implementing the ABK2 is a big challenge to the implementors with a passion in bringing every Filipino child back to school with ages five to 17 years old, Culanag said.

The project director of World Vision ABK2 said the project is in close coordination with DepEd in targeted 10 provinces in seven regions in the country. In the Visayas, the project is being implemented in the provinces of Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Cebu and Leyte where there are reported cases of high incidence of child labor.

In the province of Iloilo, 20 barangays are target areas for implementation. These include four barangays in the municipality of Ajuy, five barangays in Dueñas, six barangays in Estancia, five barangays in San Enrique and one in Iloilo City which is in Calajunan, Mandurriao district.

Culanag said that a total of 2,650 children in Iloilo were identified and assisted with 2,104 already engaged and 546 are still at risk. The project is aimed to withdraw and prevent children from exploitive labor and be educated in school.

After three years when the last Visayas Children Congress was held in May 20-23, 2006 in Iloilo City, the children have raised their voices as an important and integral part of mainstream society and family that need to be protected and cared for.

Laws that should have protected them and their rights and to punish those who have violated them have not been fully implemented. Recalling their stand, the Ilonggo children jointly expressed that “Kaming nga bata ay minamahal, hindi inaabuso. Kaming mga bata ay kayamanan, hindi kalakal. Kaming mga bata ay pinag-aaral, hindi kinakalakal. Sinasabi na kami ang bukas pero kami rin ang ngayon”.

Western Visayas is included in the list of top five regions in the country with more child laborers mostly in agriculture, hunting, and forestry industries, according to a 2008 Gender Statistics on labor and employment, Department of Labor and Employment labor force survey.

Statistics showed that four million Filipino children aged five-17 years old were economically active and 2.3 million were exposed to hazards and many of them are working. About two million of Filipino children engaged in child labor worked between one to four hours a day, 1.3 million of working children worked from five to eight hours a day and 360,000 worked for more than eight hours per day.

The study showed that 127 children as still at risk in Ajuy, 167 in Dueñas, 61 in Estancia, 135 in San Enrique, and 54 are at risk in Iloilo City. Of the number of child labor, 1,301 are females and 1,349 are males.

Culanag said there are 362 children engaged in domestic work, four in commercial and agricultural sector, six in commercial sexual exploitation, 452 in fishing, 701 in scavenging, 1,125 in sugarcane plantations. (Lydia C. Pendon)