Monday, September 8, 2014

Child Labor


http://pulitzercenter.org/projects/philippines-gold-mines-child-labor-economy
Through my research about child labor, I came up with four major reasons why child labor
exists.

First is the violation and enforcement of laws regarding child labor R.A. no. 1658 is an act
prohibiting the employment of children below 15 years of age in Public and private undertaking. However, it is being violated because it is not being enforced or monitored properly.

For example, in a factory there are thousands of workers, so the workers' profile is often not properly monitored. Sometimes they also intentionally hide child labor because they want to cut back production costs.

Second is Poverty. Due to this, poor children and their families would depend to child labor to attain basic needs. There are many factors to Poverty, if I would explain this further; this paper would not be enough, so I focused only on poverty as the reason for Child labor. Corruption is one of the main reasons why there is Poverty. Corruption in the Philippines is very rampant, that it affects the economic growth of the country. Another reason to Poverty is Unemployment, Lack of opportunities due to lack of education, it leads to having no proper income to obtain basic needs. And lastly is Indolence, a trait influenced by Spaniards. They
http://www.borgenmagazine.com/child-labor-today/#prettyPhoto
conquered the Philippines. They burned a lot of houses and they let the Filipinos work and gain
less money than them. That was the reason why Filipinos became indolent, because they we’re
thinking that even they work hard, it won’t never be enough. Spaniards also introduced siesta,which until now, most of Filipinos are still doing.

Third reason for child labor is access to free education. Though there is an easy access to freeeducation, there are still miscellaneous fees to be paid making it hard for the families to really send their kids to school. There are also failures in the educational system; instead on mandating that all children must go to school, the government allows the families to decide.Most of families would rather have their children to work and bring an income than going to school. Last reason that I came up to is the ethical tradition. In the Filipino community, it’s a tradition for children to obey their parents and elders, because they must compensate as much as possible to reduce the economic burden.


My opinion


Most of the kids who are into child labor came from poor families. I think the best way to end Child labor is to understand its root causes. Poverty is always the main reason of all social issues. Many families need child labor to attain basic needs. If we help these families come out from poverty and get a steady income, I think they would not sacrifice their children to work. However, the government should be the one to support this system and they may not be as enthusiastic about supporting this Idea, perhaps, because they don't have the capability to do so. Since greed and personal interests are also causes of poverty, I guess we should be wise enough to choose a trustworthy leader that would focus on the development of the country and not to steal money from the government. If we eliminate corruption, they would be able to give more opportunities to poor people to have a source of livelihood. It’s very hard for poor people to be emancipated from poverty if the government will remain unsympathetic to them. Chinese proverb says “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.

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