Phillipines
Plunging into the depths of the sea
- Exploitation of young workers in pearl farming in the Philippines
Extracts from Child Recruitment and Some Most Hazardous Forms of Child Labour in the Philippines - A KDF Experience by Alejandro W. Apit
A letter from Burdeos, Quezon to Kamalayan Development Foundation
April 30, 1997
To whom this may concern,
I am writing to your office so as to bring to your attention the pitiful situation of the working children in our place.
We are residents of Sitio Ikulong, Barangay Aluyon, Burdeos, Quezon where we see the situation of the working children. The pearl farm workers including some child workers work from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. All in all, there are 30 whose main task is to get shells from underneath the sea, maintain these shells and induce them towards the development of pearls within each of them.
The employer is a corporation of Chinese and Japanese business men. But the one who directly runs the company is a Filipino who is provided the technical assistance by a Japanese member of the corporation....
As residents in this place, we are frequented by some workers who are discontented with their situation, they share with us their grievances.
The daily wage that each one receives is only between P60 and P80 and they are deprived of the benefits provided by the law like the SSS, holiday pay, sick leave, vacation leave and others. Their work is greatly hazardous because they work in the sea and they are inadequately equipped with the needed safety devices or gadgets.
Though they have been in such condition, they could not air their complaints to the local government because they are afraid that they might lose their jobs and they might not get any justice but instead they might end up the ones to bear the painful consequences of complaining.
Thus, I deem it right that I be the one to present to you the above situation because I have faith in your capacity to help in this kind of problem especially one that affects working children.
Many thanks and we hope.....
Very respectfully,
(signed)
Mrs. Aville Lionel
Collecting shells under the sea
As pearl farm workers, they are brought by a motorboat to the rafts that are stationed in certain parts of the sea surrounding the Ikulong Island. And there they are exposed to the heat of the sun or to the rain. And there they dive into the sea to collect shells, they descend to as low as 60 meters in the water. They bring the shells to the rafts where they clean or scrub them, bore holes in them and tie a string on each so that each can be hung from the "boya" or "palutang". Then they tie each to the "boya" and plant a piece of plastic inside each shell.
Sometimes, some shells fall off and sink down to the bottom of the sea, when this happens, they must retrieve the shells and reconnect them to the "boyas". Everyday, they brush scrub every shell in order to accelerate the development of the pearls.
They work eight hours daily...but there are times when they are told to work overtime for which they are not compensated. Their wages are already very low... They receive their monthly wages only after several days or even more than a month....
They are afraid to complain or organise themselves, because the guard who is the only armed man on the farm can reprimand, threaten or even physically harm them.
Hazardous part of their work
The hazardous part of their work is plunging into the depths of the sea for gathering and collecting shells or for retrieving fallen shells. They are provided with insufficient and unreliable safety device. A field worker is equipped with just a pair of underwater eyeglasses and a hose that is connected to a compressor which sends air or oxygen through the hose to the field worker under the water. There is always the danger that the compressor may not deliver enough oxygen to him. The field worker also runs the risk of being drowned.
The workers' and parents' demands
The parents find their work hazardous, but they do not opt for the removal of the workers or even the younger ones from the farm.....
What the parents and the workers are most concerned with are the violations of the standard provision of laws regarding labour. The non-compliance of the employer with the minimum wage order, provisions or compensation for overtime work, rest days and holidays, workers' benefits etc.
After a thorough discussion on the Ikulong case, KDF planned to present the case to the DOLE
(Dept. of Labour & Employment) Region IV and request that it conduct an immediate investigation of the pearl farm and do something to the effect of bringing the company into compliance with the law or labour standards and thereby meeting the immediate demands of the workers. We also called on the workers to organise themselves into a union so that they can express themselves fearlessly, struggle for the rights and help DOLE in the enforcement of the law in the farm.