Bryce King 10/21/19

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Minsan Lang Sila Bata, A Reflection

A phrase circulating online now is that “Labor issues are people who make
$2,500 telling the people who make $25 that the people who make $15 make too
much money.”

This can’t be said any better in the documentary, “Minsan Lang Silang Bata”
which featured the lives of children from different parts of the Philippines. It has
three segments exposing how children at such tender ages were forced to work
and earn a living for their family. The kids were depicted making a living late into
the night stripping fat from swine skin or carrying atleast 250 sacks of cement
for 10-26 pesos, all of this with the consent of the adults around their lives.

This practice of utilizing child labour although clearly abhorrent offers no clear
resolution. As the documentary shows, the children are not forced into this kind
of life. They have been convinced, whether by their parents, or by the struggle of
poverty that even as children they must help provide for the family unaware of
the exploitation they are being subject to. As for the parents, they are also shown
struggling to make ends meet, this was never a matter of sitting back while their
children did the work for them, the real tragedy is, despite the fact that both
parents and most of the children are trying to work odd jobs, they are barely
getting by. Fact of the matter is, the problem existed long before these children
and perhaps the parents of these children were even born. To be born into
poverty is a prison these family are struggling to survive in yet any outside help
they can possibly hope for is dashed away as ultimately, society blames them for
their problems.

In the end, how can these people find a way out of the poverty they were born
into if society, the business, their employers, and everyone around them are
conditioned to exploit or ignore their plight. As the title of the documentary
states, when can this children still be children if that was taken from them before
they were even born?