Marnel Arcones’ face lights up with a huge smile when he talks about going back to school after years of toiling as a child worker in factories, on farms and as a domestic helper.
When he was 15, his mother left the family, his father could no longer support his seven children on his meagre wages as a day labourer in the Eastern Visayas, one of the Philippines’ poorest regions, and Arcones had to quit school and work.
“I was very sad to leave school, but my family is so poor that I had no choice,” the skinny 21-year-old said outside the small wooden house he shares with his brother in Cambayan village, a hamlet in the Basey district of Samar island.
Photo: Reuters
Arcones became one of the estimated 5.5 million children aged five to 17 in the Philippines who work — nearly 20 percent of the country’s youth.
Almost three million of them work in hazardous jobs, mostly in mining, agriculture and sex work, while the rest help out on family-owned farms or do light work that does not harm their health or disrupt their education.
Demand for child labor is high across Asia, the world’s fastest-growing economic region. Almost half the world’s 168 million child labourers are in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the International Labour Organization.
Arcones first worked as a domestic helper in a nearby city, before moving to the capital, Manila, where higher wages in a factory meant he could send more money home to his family.
However, long hours and big city life were hard for the shy country boy. He returned home to his village where good jobs were scarce, so he took whatever work he could find.
“The work was really, really hard. I worked long hours and carried heavy sacks of rice and timber pieces from the mountains,” he said. “But I couldn’t give up. I had to work so my younger siblings could go to school.”
He shows the large scar on his stomach — the result of surgery for a hernia he developed because of the heavy lifting.
Jobs became even scarcer after Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Eastern Visayas in 2013, prompting Arcones to accept help from aid agency Terre des Hommes, which works in the region to encourage children to go back to school.
He has been back in secondary school since June last year, with financial support from Terre des Hommes.
“I get teased a lot because I’m so ‘old,’ but I don’t mind, I’m so happy to be back in school, and this time I will stay, because I want a better life,” he said.
He has become a youth representative on his village council and is keen to spread the word to children about the benefits of continuing school beyond elementary level.
Aid workers and teachers say sending children to work is a way of life in many of the Philippines’ rural areas, which, despite robust overall economic growth, remain mired in poverty.
More than 45 percent of people in the Eastern Visayas are poor, compared with 25 percent nationwide, the World Bank said.
“Poverty is the main reason why many children leave school,” Terre des Hommes local project manager Donabelle Abalo said. “But it’s also part of the culture. Many parents don’t value education because they didn’t finish school themselves.”
Even though education is free, many children do not attend school because the cost of books, uniforms, meals and transport is prohibitive for their families.
“Survival comes first here before sending kids to school,” said Cipriano Gadil, a mobile teacher with the government’s Alternative Learnings Systems program, which offers informal education to out-of-school children.
“It’s hard work because we have few resources here,” said Gadil, who covers 30 communities in the district with just one colleague. “We have a lot of convincing to do because many children go to school hungry, so they’d rather drop out and work.”
In the nearby Simeon Ocdol high school, which was badly damaged by Typhoon Haiyan, headteacher Maria Teresa Refugio said staff work hard at trying to persuade parents to send their children to school.
“Luckily, we have few dropouts, but it’s a continuous process of reaching out and convincing parents, so that attitudes change,” she said.
Before Typhoon Haiyan many children were already working in agriculture, but the loss of family income after the disaster has pushed more into hazardous work, Abalo said.
The government, concerned about the rising number of children being trafficked for labor after Haiyan, launched a plan to root out the worst forms of child labor by next year, with access to education a key plank of its strategy.
The Philippines has also ratified all key international conventions concerning child labor.
However, a US government report on the worst forms of child labor in the Philippines last year said that, though Manila had almost doubled the number of labor law compliance officers, enforcement remained challenging due to the limited number of inspectors and lack of resources for inspections.
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
RSS