Article
Combating child labor and improving the lives of tobacco farmers [Philippines]
[F]armers…welcome new farm technologies and practices to help prevent child labor…Three non-governmental organizations, for this purpose, extend their advocacies and assistance particularly on child-labor prevention, reforestation, and improving the lives of tobacco farmers in some towns in the Cordillera, the Ilocos region and Occidental Mindoro…[They]...are…partners of PMFTC [Philip Morris Intl. affiliate operating as a joint venture between Philip Morris Philippines Manufacturing Inc. and Fortune Tobacco Corp.] in its corporate social responsibility programs...[and are] implementing...an intervention to reduce, if not totally eliminate, child labor...As a matter of policy, PMFTC does not condone the unlawful employment of children, the reason it requires all of its contract growers to comply with the company’s corporate policy.