Mary Jane Cairel Purposive Communication

BSMATH 2 Ma’am Marilou O. Cuyos

TOPIC: CHILD LABOR

Good morning, everyone!

First of all, I want to express my gratitude to our instructor for giving me such a great opportunity to
speak here. My objective for today is to talk to you about child labor wherein it is a major threat to
children’s rights. Do you know that every 100 children around the world , 16 of them are child
laborers. According to UNICEF, there are 160 million children working in the world today. Let me
precisely define what the word "child labor" means. Child labor is the employment of children that
forced to do trivial manual jobs, for little monetary payment in exchange. It is a crime in which
children are forced to work at a very young age. Under Republic Act No. 9231, which amends
Republic Act No. 7610, children below the age of 15 are not allowed to be employed, permitted, or
suffered to work, in any public or private establishment. As we all know, children are the nation's
future so why are some using them as slaves simply to enrich themselves? Why don't they have
eyes like ours? Why don't people let little kids enjoy their innocent childhood? Why do they deny
young children access to their constitutional right to education. I hope you all must be well aware
of the child labor and the threats it poses to a nation’s growth, not to mention the future of a child.
It will deprives their childhood of freedom, education and a health.

Child labor is filled with a high poverty level. Poverty is the most common factor contributing to
child labor. Due to poverty, some parents sell their children or abandon them on the street, which
in turn causes many crimes like child trafficking and sex trafficking. Children are easily exploited
and become cheap laborers; they are hired in preference to adults. These innocent and vulnerable
children are then forced to odd jobs such as begging, selling cigarettes or drugs. These children
have no choice but to go to work because if they don't, they will starve and die. Child labor for
these children is survival; there are no other chances for them. None of these children have the
privilege of going to school or being able to go to a house at the end of the day. Most of these
children work from the crack of dawn and don’t stop working until late of the night just for living.
Consider how lucky we are to have three meals every day, wearing decent clothes and having a
parent at this moment. Every child is a gift from god and it must be cherished with good care and
love by the family and the society. We all know that the most innocent phase of human life is
childhood. It is the phase when we are carefree, fun-loving, learning, playing, and more. Go back
into your childhood, and for most of us, there are beautiful memories. And how wonderful to have
grown up with such carefree abandonment while we had parents, grandparents, and others
looking after us. But this is the story of not too many children. Yes, there are far more children who
are scarred and tormented. They hate their childhood. They would do anything to get out of the
dungeons of being children and being controlled and tortured by others. They want to break free
from this world.

I want to conclude my speech by saying that Government and the citizens play an important role in
ending child labor. Laws against child labor should be tightened, free education and food should
be provided to children. Children are made to love and care, pushing them to work is not fair. Let
them earn knowledge not money. As students and citizens, we have the eyes to see what's
actually going on, the ears to hear the struggles of the children, and the lips to inform the higher
authorities if we see a child being horribly abused by making them do work. So let’s put our hand
together to stop child labor. As stated by Dr. Jose Rizal, "the Youth is the Hope of Our Future."