Phillipines

Pearl works ten hours a day

On the sugar plantations 

Extracts from Child Recruitment and Some Most Hazardous Forms of Child Labour in the Philippines - A KDF Experience by Alejandro W. Apit

 

Tired after today's work, Pearl rests and prepares for tomorrow's work

Pearl's father is a carpenter, while her mother takes care of the children at home. A typical carpenter in a rural town is not a regular worker...he earns now, the next day or week, he gets no penny. Thus, from the point of view of the parents, the family has no other alternative than to rely on their seven children for survival...

Now, Pearl's family has two members among its children who work in Metro Manila, while Pearl and the other four children remain in Leyte. All of them with the exception of the youngest are working to support their family. Pearl works in the Rodriguez' hacienda. 

At 8 years old, Pearl started working in the hacienda. She was supposed to be in grade three, but she discontinued schooling...She works in the sugar cane plantation together with other children. Using a tool popularly know as "machete", she participates in wiping the weeds out of the plantation. She works from six in the morning until four in the afternoon. She is given only some ten minutes for her lunch.... She has no rest throughout the ten-hour period, and, while working, she is exposed to the heat of the sun and/or the wetness and coldness of the rain. The foreman is always watching her and all the others so that everybody works uninterruptedly.

She works from Mondays to Saturdays; she has a rest day every Sunday. For her ten-hour work, she receives only P25 per day or P150 per week which is handed to her every Saturday. For the whole month, she earns only between P600 and P650. Besides such very low wage, the hacienda owner has no other obligations to her. No medicare, SSS, 13th month pay, disability benefits, sick leave, vacation etc. The money she receives every Saturday, she gives immediately to her mother.

In the course of her everyday work, she complains of the heat of the sun. She is always on guard against snakes. After work, she returns home complaining of pain and tiredness. Due to constant exposure to the elements, she is frequently ill with cold and fever. 

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Rachel Complains of Heavy Loads Upon Her Back

 

Rachel is 12 years old. Her father has been himself a sugar worker or "hurnal" now, he works on a pakyaw basis. He agrees to contracts with hacienda owners. Usually, according to the contract he agrees to clean a hectare of land and plant it with sugar cane in two to four weeks and after completing his work the owner pays him P900. For her part, Rachel's other is preoccupied with watching, feeding and caring for Rachel and 8 other children.

Rachel is the fifth of nine children. She does not know the educational qualifications of most of her older brothers and sisters. She know only that an elder brother earns by selling bread and another one by delivering coconut wine to stores in the city. The younger ones are in school ... and the youngest is in a ... day care center....

In the plantation, Rachel and her brother are involved in weeding out, mixing the soil with fertilizers, planting sugar cane parts, cutting sugar cane tips, and carrying loads of sugar canes and unloading them into a truck. In this work, they are exposed to such dangers as being bitten by one or more snakes, wounding any part of their hands, legs or feet by the machete in the course of removing the weeds or cutting the canes, falling from the makeshift stairway in the course of transferring the bundles of sugar cane trunks and others.

In fact, she saw one of her co-workers bitten by a snake and brought to the nearest hospital. For the hospital expenses, the hacienda owner gave the victim's family only P100. Moreover, the P100 was then to be deducted from the victim's wage. She saw also another one who, due to the heaviness of the loads on his shoulders, fell down from a stairway with his hips hitting a pain causing projection from the ground. For the wound he got in such accident, he was given only a penicillin tablet.

Rachel says she does not like what has been going on in her life, but she can't do anything. She does not want the work in the hacienda. The work is not fit for her and the rest of the children, but they have not other option.