1M Filipino children working as domestics

An increasing number of children are being employed as domestic servants in dire conditions across Asia amid rapid modernization and poverty, a study presented at a forum on child labor in the Philippines showed yesterday.

While it remains difficult to accurately assess the number of children working as "modern day slaves," studies showed that there is a high number of youngsters working in major cities and urban centers across the region. (The Philippine Child Protection Law, RA 7610, defines children as those below 18 years old).

Pre-Asian crisis figures said there were approximately 1.2 million child domestic workers in Bangladesh, one million in the Philippines, 1.5 million in Indonesia, 100,000 in Sri Lanka and 62,000 in Nepal.

Many of those were young females who are often abused, both sexually and physically, a study presented at the Manila forum on child domestic workers in Asia said.

"Asia is home to more than 60 percent of working children worldwide," the study said.

"Child labor has increased. Abuses are more rampant and more hidden nowadays."

"The more scattered laborers are, they are increasingly more difficult to protect. And finally, they tend to sacrifice their education in the face of constricting incomes and opportunities."

It blamed poverty as the number one cause of child domestic work, with globalization exacerbating the phenomenon.

As the Asian middle class grew in recent years the demand for "younger, more subservient household servants" also increased with once traditional housewives now seeking work outside homes to help boost family incomes.

Less work in rural areas in the countryside due to the influx of cheap agriculture imports, and the sharp decline in prices of exported commodities, have also pressured "the younger members of families to search for work away from home to pitch in their cash remittances."

The survey said most parents had little choice but to let their children take on domestic work because it may guarantee regular employment, the study said.

But while some find homes where they are treated well as extensions of the family, most are forced into working 24 hours a day without holidays and are unpaid.

"Though a roof over the head is surely free, many child domestic workers reveal they were forced to eat leftovers, or compete for dog food, to drink liquid detergent mixed in juice or swallow the emotional strain that goes with the work," the study said. "Help from outside is difficult because they cannot go beyond closed doors. They are on their own."

Social Work Secretary Corazon Soliman, in her keynote address to the forum, urged Asian governments to eliminate child labor by passing legislation that would outlaw the practice and by ratifying conventions of the International Labour Organization.

She said it was an "anomaly" for parents to say they love their children and yet allow them to work elsewhere and suffer both emotional and physical abuses in exchange for money.

In the Philippines, she said a proposed law that would outlaw child domestic work is being debated and pushed and other countries would do well to follow suit.