A visiting official of the International Labor Organization yesterday called for a sustained advocacy against child labor in the country as their agency's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labor project with the Philippine government comes to an end on August 31.

"A sustained advocacy is needed that should lead to attitudinal change, value reorientation, and strong political will to combat the problem," Serenidad Lavador, chief technical advisor of the IPEC Philippine Time Bound Programme, said at the opening of the two-day TBP Conference: The Final Scorecard for Iloilo and Negros Occidental at the L'Fisher Hotel yesterday.

The provinces of Iloilo and Negros Occidental are among the nine priority areas covered by the IPEC TBP, a five-year program -from 2002 to 2007- which sought to strengthen the enabling environment for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor or WFCL and reduce the incidence of selected WFCL through direct action for child laborers and their families.

The project, "Supporting the Time-Bound Programme on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor in the Philippines," has a $5.2-million funding from the US Department of Labor.

Project interventions sought the withdrawal and prevention of 44,500 Filipino children from domestic labor, commercial sexual exploitation, mining and quarrying, deep-sea fishing, sugarcane plantations and pyrotechnics production.

In Iloilo and Negros Occidental, including Bacolod City, child laborers assisted are those who are sexually exploited, working in sugarcane plantations, and in deep-sea fishing.

Data of IPEC PTBP as of June 2007 show about 41,200 or 92.5 percent of the 44,500 target children in the Philippines have been withdrawn and prevented from six WFCL through education, vocational training, counseling, legal assistance and rehabilitation support.

As of March 30 this year, more than 6,600 child laborers in Negros Occidental and Iloilo have been withdrawn from WFCL, based on figures provided by the IPEC PTBP implementing partners in the two provinces.

Nationwide, about 4,400 family members have generated and increased their incomes through livelihood support.

"We're very happy with the results," Lavador said. In the two provinces in Western Visayas, the implementing partners are the Bacolod City-Gender and Development Council, Province of Negros Occidental, Provincial Council for the Protection of Children-Iloilo, Actuator for Socio-Economic Progress Inc., Sugar Industry Foundation Inc., Education for Life Foundation, Northern Iloilo Alliance for Coastal Development, Independent Planters of BISCOM and the Department of Agrarian Reform.

Lavador said in her presentation that after five years of implementation, the IPEC PTBP, among others, was able to identify and profile through baseline surveys of Filipino children in the WFCL sectors and used the data to fight child labor.

She added that laws and local government ordinances against child labor have been enacted and enforced and budgets for activities against child labor have also been allocated by a number of local governments.

But Lavador said that concrete measures are still needed to sustain action against child labor, including allocation of budget and other resources by all stakeholders, particularly the government.

She said there is also a need to upscale direct action by addressing other worst forms of child labor which appear to be on the rise, including child trafficking, child labor in agriculture other than in sugarcane farms, and highly hazardous activities such scavenging and waste recycling.

Lavador's other recommendations include effective capacity-building for the extensive enforcement of laws and child labor-related programs, and formulation and implementation of a reliable national tracking system and scientific methodologies to measure the incidence of child labor.*NLG

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