[Child labor, record-high OFW deployment show] Aquino, failure at generating decent jobs – KMU

Citing three million child laborers and the record-high deployment of OFWs, labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno condemned the Aquino government today for failing to create decent jobs in the country, saying the government’s employment program is bankrupt.

Last Tuesday, the International Labor Organization released the findings of a study conducted in 2011 showing 5.59 million children in the country are already working, of which 3.03 million are considered as child laborers.

The National Statistics Office, meanwhile, released a study showing there were 2.2 million Filipinos who decided to work abroad from April to September 2011, higher than the estimated 2 million for the same period in 2010.

“Filipinos are leaving the country in record numbers because there is a chronic lack of decent jobs here. Children are being forced to work because their parents either have no jobs or are earning pitiful sums in their work,” said Elmer “Bong” Labog, KMU chairperson.

“Just a few days before Pres. Aquino marks his second year in office, data are pouring in that show that decent jobs are not being generated in the country and the economy is not improving for the majority of Filipinos,” he said.

“These data belie in advance the lies that the president is preparing to spread through his State of the Nation Address in July. Clearly, this government is a failure when it comes to creating decent jobs in the country,” he added.

Bankrupt employment program

KMU said the Aquino government fails in generating decent jobs in the country because it refuses to veer away from its bankrupt employment program, that of attracting foreign investors into the country by offering cheap and repressed labor.

“The jobs being created in the country are low-paying and largely contractual. That’s the type of jobs generated by the government’s program of attracting foreign investors into the country, the main component of which is the offering of cheap and repressed labor,” Labog said.

“What the government should do to create decent jobs is to implement genuine agrarian reform and create basic industries. What it is doing, however, is defending landlords’ control over their lands and refusing to develop local industries in order to please foreign investors,” he added.