Stop having sex with kids

By Erwin Tulfo

The figures have always been alarming. But the recent one deserves immediate action.

The 2911 NSO survey showed that 5.59 Pinoy kids are now working. Of this, 2.993 million are prostitutes disguised as waitresses or drug pushers disguised as vendors.

Many of these 2.993 million kids are snatchers pretending to be beggars. They are now practically the ruthless lords of Metro Manila’s streets. Disturbingly amusing is the fact that they never run out of modus operandi. Just like any other enterprise, these kid robbers-snatchers keep on changing their styles and expanding their trade.

On Quirino Avenue and FB Harrison, kids in filthy, makeshift costumes wait for the traffic lights to go red. Then they strike in multitudes. While the classic beggars with babies go from car to car, the innovators stand in front of the other vehicles and perform all sorts of acts. Some girls, as young as 7, gyrate their hips and sway their arms supposedly in a dance, then knock on the window glass for their “performance fee.”

Many commuters give coins, a few hand bills, out of sheer pity. Which is bad. For as long as there are donors, there will be beggars. Remove the givers, then you get rid of the young drifters. It’s as simple as that.

The same logic applies to child prostitutes. They will continue to thrive as long as there are perverts who delight in abusing their young bodies. Where there is demand, there is supply.

This also applies in the economics of kiddie sex.

When adults stop having sex with kids, then there won’t be child prostitutes.

On a grander scale, there wouldn’t be any child laborers if there weren’t requests for them.

For starters, employers save a fortune by giving them pitiful wages, if any at all. Of course, the young illegal workers have no benefits at all. And competitiveness is high since all the workers are ‘childish’. Thus, the sense of doing everything to outdo each other is strong in each laborer. To the advantage of their exploiter.

It is a surprise that Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz was surprised at the NSO survey results. Child workers are everywhere – on the streets — as beggars, stevedores, errand and watch your car boys, and even in homes, where they work as servants, maids or houseboys.

But to her credit, Baldoz deserves a round of applause for intensifying the campaign against the use of child laborers, specially in “hot spots” like Central Luzon, Bicol, Western Visayas, Northern Mindanao, and Central Visayas.

Kids deserve their childhood. Those who have lost theirs have ended up as criminals when they reached adulthood.

Grimly, the country’s crime sector – composed of rapists, robbers, criminals and swindlers – will have 5.4 million new members in a few years’ time. These are the kids now toiling in various sweatshops.