Labor Minister Rafael Alburquerque said yesterday that Spain and the U.S. will help fund Dominican programs to combat child labor. His comments were occasioned, he said, by the announcement that the DR is accepting the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The treaty underpinning the Court includes a provision on the protection of minors. Alburquerque notes that official figures say that some 89,000 children between the ages of 10 and 14 work. He noted that his Ministry is currently undertaking a National Survey of Child Labor with the help of the International Program to Eradicate Child Labor of the Geneva-based International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations specialized agency in charge of labor and work safety issues. Spain and the U.S. have promised funding for programs emerging from the national survey. Alburquerque noted that his Ministry already has some programs underway in this area. In Constanza the Ministry and Pro-Joven Dominicano have a program to take 250 children away from high-risk agricultural jobs and put them in school. In Puerto Plata and Sos?a, the Ministry and Foro Social are working to take 200 children out of prostitution and put them into school. In Santo Domingo the Ministry and Pastoral Juvenil have started a program to take 200 kids out of street work in the city’s northern barrios.
