DOLE rejects US govt report on child labor in RP

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) rejected on Friday a United States government report listing the Philippines as one of the 58 countries where child labor is being used to make goods that are exported to the US. Labor Secretary Marianito Roque told GMANews.TV that incidents of child labor in the Philippines are very low due to the International Labor Organization (ILO)'s efforts to rescue child workers in the country. "We don't have that much child labor in the Philippines now. We have a child labor rescue program funded by the ILO to shield our children from the menace of child labor," he said in a phone interview. Roque was referring to the DOLE's Sagip Batang Manggagawa (Rescue Child Laborers) program, which has been in place since 1994 to ensure immediate responses to child labor problems in the Philippines. He said the US government should go to the ILO if it has "issues" with child labor in the Philippines. "If they have issues with child labor, they should take it up with the ILO," he said. Foreign products An Associated Press report on Thursday quoted the US Labor Secretary Hilda Solis as saying the US governments wants “to engage with countries and corporations that may have their hands in the wrong places here and try to correct this." The US Labor Department’s report, which is mandated by the US Congress, does not name the companies using foreign products made using child workers or forced labor. But the AP cited Coca-Cola as an example, which buys sugar cane around the world. Sugar cane is produced in Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Thailand and Uganda, all of which are included in the US Labor Department’s report that says child or forced labor is involved in production of sugar cane. [See: US govt report exposes goods made by child labor US govt report exposes goods made by child labor] While the US Labor Department says it does not seek to penalize US companies using forced or child labor, it could result in reduced quota for the offending country. For instance, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, both Democrats, have spent years working with the US chocolate industry to reduce child labor on cocoa farms in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Earlier this year, San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co. reacted to reports of forced child labor in cotton farming in Uzbekistan by banning its suppliers from using that nation's cotton until labor conditions change, Labor Department spokeswoman Kelley Benander said. The DOLE is coming out with an executive order that would contain 29 products from 21 countries, once it is finalized after a period for public comments, said the report. - GMANews.TV