MANILA, Feb. 3 — The government’s fight against child labor, particularly its worst forms, has leveled up with the signing of the Joint Memorandum Circular on the Guidelines in the implementation of the H.E.L.P. M.E. Convergence Program to Address Child Labor.
“The Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) is being issued to provide policy guidelines and procedures in the implementation of the HELP ME Convergence Program to Address Child Labor,” Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz said after the signing of the JMC at the joint meeting of the Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cabinet Cluster and National Economic and Development Authority Board-Social Development Committee.
HELP ME stands for the following: H – for health, nutrition and medical services; E – for education and training; L – for livelihood opportunities to parents of child laborers; P – for prevention, protection and prosecution; M – for monitoring; and E – for evaluation. It engages several government agencies to deliver services and assist in the promotion of child rights to child laborers and their families to combat child labor.
The Help Me Convergence Program is aimed at implementing a community-based, sustainable, and responsive convergence program to address child labor in the Philippines by providing focused, converged, and synchronized strategies to effectively address the child labor problem.
Its beneficiaries include children engaged in child labor and family members of child laborers needing appropriate services. It shall be implemented in all regions, but priority will be provided to barangays identified by the DOLE and its partners to be transformed as child labor-free.
The joint issuance states that the DOLE shall provide overall coordination of activities of the Help Me Convergence Program in the areas of policy, program and strategy formulation and implementation, as well as in program monitoring and evaluation.
DOLE shall promote expansion of the alliance towards provision of direct services such as, but not limited to, health, education, welfare and legal assistance to child labor victims and provision of viable economic opportunities to parents of child laborers.
Under the joint memorandum circular, a Help Me Program Management Team (PMT) will be created which shall act as the coordinating and monitoring body in the implementation of the said convergence program activities and shall be composed of technical staff from the member-agencies.
The PMT is tasked to assess and evaluate the attainment of the Help Me objectives, prepare, coordinate and monitor the implementation of the HELP ME work plans, ensure that the activities of the HELP ME Program stakeholders are synchronized and well-timed, discuss issues and concerns of members of the PMT before elevating to the NCLC, and provide NCLC with recommendations relating to the overall directions of the HELP ME Program.
The Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cabinet Cluster approved the HELP ME Convergence Program during its joint meeting with the NEDA Board – Social Development Committee in November 8, 2012.
Baldoz signed the Joint Memorandum Circular No.1, together with Secretaries of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, NEDA, Philippine Information Agency, Department of Interior and Local Government, Department of Health, Department of Justice, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, Council for the Welfare of Children, and the National Commission on Indigenous People. (PCOO/DOLE)
