In the Philippines, about 2.06 million children under age 18 are forced to work in dangerous conditions due to poverty. One of the most common forms of child labor is in deep-sea fishing, where children as young as 9 years old dive to dangerous depths to drive fish into nets, often resulting in injury or death. Other common industries exploiting child labor are mining, farming, and domestic work. The government of the Philippines has signed an agreement with the US to eliminate the worst forms of child labor through education initiatives and economic alternatives for families.

1. http://www.articlealley.com/child-labor-in-philippines-666377.html
The term Child Labor means illegally employing children who are less than 18 years of age in
dangerous and life threatening activities. Poverty is the main reason due to which children under
the age of 18 years are compelled to work in dangerous and life threatening conditions. In
Philippines there are about 2.06 million children who are forced to work in rock quarries, farms,
industries, mines and on fishing boats. The consequences of Child Labor on an underage child
can be numerous and crippling on his or her physical, mental and emotional state. It can
seriously hamper the well being of a child who is supposed to get a sound education and
nutrition to develop into a healthy adult. Due to Child labor these children end up being
malnutritioned, weak and can also suffer from a large number of ailments.
The percentage of young people in Philippines between the age of five and seventeen is about 33
percent of its total population which comes to about 22.4 million. This is a large number
considering that Philippines is a young nation. Between the ages of 5 to 7 years, one in every six
children has to work to earn a living and help support his or her family. This astounding fact tells
us that around sixteen percent of young children in Philippines are working. Child Labor is
prevalent in mining, production, farming, and deep sea fishing industries and many children are
also working as domestic workers.
The most common industry where child labor is practiced in Philippines is Deep-sea fishing.
About forty years ago the sea around Philippines was plentiful of fish, the fishermen could make
a tremendous catch just along the shore. Sadly that is not the case now as fishermen need to go
miles into the sea to get a decent catch which will get them a day's meal. Many a times they need
to use cyanide, dynamites and nets to able to catch a good amount of fish. There are many
fishermen who use young boys to help them catch the fish, who quite unfortunately die while
fishing, due to hazardous practices.
An illegal method of fishing called Muro Ami which is used frequently in Philippines is the most
common form of Child labor prevalent today. In this method the young child dives down to deep
depths of the sea. He carries with him a rock or a pipe which he uses to beat the delicate corals so
that the huge number of fishes living in them get startled and are driven into large nets waiting to
catch them. Many a times these young children drown and lose their lives. This inhuman practice
has also destroyed the beautiful coral reefs surrounding Philippines.
Paaling is another fishing practice which is as widespread and life threatening as Muro Ami. A
hose is connected to a surface air compressor and the young diver dives into the sea and drives
hordes of fish into waiting nets with the help of a virtual bubble curtain formed by the
compressor. Many agencies are now working together to abolish the inhuman practice of child
labor and provide a safe and healthy environment for the children to grow in.
Child Slave Labor in the Philippines

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3. source: Kristin Heineman
Child slave labor refers to the illegal employment of children below 18 years of age in hazardous
occupations. Underage children are being forced to manual labor to help their families mainly
due to poverty. About 2.06 million all around the Philippines are compelled to do labor, such as
in crop plantations, mining caves, rock quarries, and factories.
Child labor has many ill effects in children who are supposed to be in the environment of a
classroom rather than roaming the streets and risking every chance, time and time again, to earn
money. Although most do get the privilege of education, most end up being dropouts and
repeaters because they are not able to focus on their studies. Because of child labor, children
suffer from malnutrition, hampered growth, and improper biological development.
The Philippines is literally a young nation with a high percentage of young people in its overall
population. Children between ages five and seventeen number 22.4 million, comprising a third of
the overall Philippine population. Working children represent sixteen percent of the overall
population of children between ages five and seven. That means that one out of every six
children work (Working Children 1). In the last twelve months, 3.7 million children ages five to
seventeen worked. Children from rural households make up 67.1 percent of this amount and
almost half are between the ages of five and fourteen. In addition, in the last week, 2.85 million
children between the ages of five and seventeen worked. Of this number, half are between the
ages of five and fourteen, consisting of approximately 1.4 million children. These working
children consist of largely of boys, who account for 65 percent. As far as the locations where
these children work, 60 percent perform unpaid family work in their own households, 17.2
percent work in their own homes and 53 percent work in family farms.
One of the most common jobs for a child slave to carry out is fishing. Forty years ago, fish were
so plentiful in the Philippines that one could fish just a stone's throw away from its shores.
Today, fisherman sail far and often stay long in the sea to be able to bring home anything. And a
net is sometimes more than what they need. Dynamites, Molotov cocktails, and cyanide are
frequently used. But others use something else. They use young enslaved boys who are usually
brought home dead along with their catch.
This illegal fishing practice, called muro ami, is widely practiced in the Philippines, and requires
children to dive to dangerous depths to pound the easily broken corals with rocks or pipes to
scare fish into a large waiting net. Young divers often drown and the coral reefs become
devastated. A similar fishing process which is as destructive and as dangerous is paaling, which
compels young divers to use hoses attached to a surface air compression to form a virtual bubble
curtain which forces fish into the nets. Typically, a paaling operation uses four boats, each
carrying 25 divers.
The Palawan-based Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) has documented statements
made by 129 children who escaped from a fishing vessel using muro ami and paaling methods in
July 2000. Eddie, 14 used to help his father farm but ran away wanting to earn money. "On July
3, 1998 I started my work as a diver on the FB Unity. The boat has 350 divers with four
managers. We had a ten month contract to work with the company. The company said we would

4. be paid at the end of the contract. Our food was deducted from our salary. We were treated like
animals and when we committed mistakes were whipped and beaten. Workers were compelled to
work despite illness. We made seven dives a day and could catch fifty to seventy tubs of fish in
every dive.
June 17, narrated "We had to work from 6a.m. in the morning until 5p.m. in the evening.
Sometimes when we made mistakes, our supervisor whipped us with a rope almost the size of a
wrist. On one occasion I was whipped because I misplaced the hose. Due to the maltreatment we
suffered we decided to escape. While we can endure the diving we cannot withstand the lashing
and physical brutality.
ELAC's document is long. It talks of miserable life, suffering and death in the sea often unknown
by authorities. The fishing practices in the country have not only become desperate but
dangerous.
Besides the practices of muro ami and paaling, children in the Philippines are used to perform
other tasks as well. Nicreto, a fourteen year old boy who works in the sugar cane fields in
addition to his job as a fisher-boy decided to try his hand in the coastal area of Tagda, Hinigaran,
Negos Occidental. Without proper training or education; at the age of twelve, he went to sea. He
had to go to work at 4a.m. and would come home, with or without a catch, at three or four in the
afternoon. If lucky he would have a good catch, and earn 10 to 15 pesos a day. But when fishing
became bad, he was forced to go back to take odd-jobs in the sugar cane farm to earn at least one
kilo of rice. Nicreto suffers from anemia and in his present situation, cannot even think about life
in the future. For him every day is lived only on whatever there is.
Rosie, a nine year old sugar cane worker states "I am Rosie Baroquillo. I started working on the
sugar cane field when I was seven years old. Now, I am nine and I will still work in the field. I
stopped going to school because my family could not afford to spend the money. My father is
already dead. The money I earn is not enough to buy food. I am tired and hungry doing my work
in the field. I wish I could have soup to go with the rice I eat because without soup it is hard to
swallow.
United States Deputy under Secretary for International Labor Affairs Thomas B. Moorehead,
Philippines Secretary of Labor Patricia Santo Tomas, and Philippines Secretary of Education
Raul Roco signed a collaborative agreement on a Timebound Program to eliminate the worst
forms of child labor in the Philippines on June 28, 2002. The agreement commits both countries
to work together on a number of initiatives to remove children from work, provide them access
to quality and relevant education and offer families viable economic alternatives to child labor.
The U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) will provide $10 million for child labor action
programs and education initiatives. $5 million of this will go through the International Program
on the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO/IPEC) and $5 million will be competitively bid and
funded by the USDOL to be a nongovernmental organization. This Timebound Program will be
implemented in communities with a high incidence of child labor with a particular focus on
children in mining and quarrying, domestic work, pyrotechnics production, agriculture

5. plantations, commercial sexual exploitation, deep-sea fishing and other priority groups to be
determined in the Philippines.
With confidence, this program, along with the help of other nations like the United States, will
begin putting an end to child slave labor in the Philippines. Although they may seem like
inevitable occurrences, it is possible for a conclusion to the tremendous problems which result
from child slave labor.