COTABATO CITY — Teams from the Bangsamoro government on Monday rescued 121 child laborers in this city and in nearby towns, immediately made beneficiaries of a rehabilitation program for children forced to work to earn something for their daily needs.
Officials of the Ministry of Labor and Employment-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (MoLE-BARMM) on Wednesday supplied reporters with photos and videos showing the 121 boys and girls their rescue teams found working in the markets and vending various merchandise in the streets, brought to their office for an orientation on MoLE-BARMM’s activities addressing child labor in all towns and cities under its jurisdiction.
Regional Labor and Employment Minister Muslimin G. Sema and Bai Sara Jane S. Sinsuat, director of MolE-BARMM’s Bureau of Employment Promotion and Welfare Division, together facilitated the activity participated by the rescued 121 boys and girls, capped off with the distribution of school bags and essential schooling supplies and cash stipends to each of them.
Parents and guardians of the child laborers also attended the informal workshop, held at the MoLE-BARMM’s office in Cotabato City. This forms part of the Bangsamoro Child Labor Sagip Program, or BCLSP, which is being implemented by the ministry in all of the autonomous region’s five provinces and three cities.
Ms. Sinsuat and personnel of MoLE-BARMM’s information division separately told reporters on Wednesday that each of the rescued 121 child laborers, 84 of them from towns in Maguindanao del Norte, were provided with P15,000 cash assistance through their parents or duly acknowledged guardians. The children were also supplied by the office of Mr. Sema with bags and school supplies worth P5,000.
The MoLE-BARMM’s BCLSP is partly focused on helping reform children employed by their parents, or elders, as combatants, supplied with firearms they would need in protecting their clans from adversaries.
There is prevalence of bloody family feuds in some predominantly Moro areas in BARMM, triggered either by land disputes, or politics, or affronts to maratabat, or clan pride and honor.
Records in the MoLE-BARMM and the region’s health and education ministries indicate that 3,781 child laborers in the autonomous region had benefited from the BCLSP in the past three years.
They are now studying in government schools in BARMM’s five provinces, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, and its three cities, Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato. — John Felix M. Unson