01.00.00 Amusement Park - Canoe going down water chute, rollar coaster Music
v/o
It is a day she will want to remember, one truly carefree day. A few hours to help Mari-Lou erase the memory of far too many days of fear.
Music, song
v/o
Mari-Lou was recruited from a peasant village on a distant island to become the maid of a rich businessman in Manila.
Together with Jeanette and Imelda, she found herself locked up, beaten, unpaid and sexually molested by her new boss.
Cora, a government social worker found them after they escaped - sliding eight floors down a rope on the outside of an apartment building.
01.48 Interview with Mari-Lou
I was told mother wanted me home because she was sick, but the agency wouldn’t let me go.
My employer molested us. He touched our breasts. We jsut ran away and cried.
V/o
The girls case has taken months to come to court - it’ll take years to resolve, but in the Philippines the rich and the powerful rarely pay the prices of their crimes.
02.17 Interview with Cora
... he is one of the - I guess - the ‘magic seven’ in the rice cartel and President Ramos knows him very well, so, though he is a very powerful man we keep on praying, you know, that these children must be given justice.
02.46 Merry go round, scenics, boy on bike, people and children working Music
v/o
The story of child labour begins here on islands like Mindanao.
Children have always worked the fields with their parents.
Once they were a source of wealth and security, but after years of rural decline, they’ve become a burden.
Many families that want to stay together and make ends meet have to leave the land, they and their children forced to work in jobs no parent would wish upon them.
03.33 Pan of green hills, village, motorbikes, children looking for mercury, girl with sacks Music
v/o
To escape destitution in Mindanao, 60,000 men, women and children have ascended what’s known as the ‘Mountain of Exhaustion’.
They’ve come on gold rush - to the mountain top town of Dilwalwal.
In the past decade, the mines at Dilwalwal have made millionaires out of fifty Filipinos .. the rest, well, they live on in hope.
Everyone works, everyone dreams.
Instead of going to school, children scavenge all day amongst the detritus of the mines.
04.28 Close up of Ginistro searching for mercury
11 year old Ginisto and his brothers spend their days searching for mercury that’s spilled during the process of extracting gold from the ore.
They earn 4 dollars a day while the mercury pollutes their bodies, rots their brains, stunts their growth.
04.50 Julita makes up to 8 dollars a day working from sun up to sun down collecting lost and discarded sacks from the gold mine.
And Joel can make the same retrieving gold ore that spills beneath the wheels of endless streams of trucks.
05.12 Tracking shot into mine, men and boys going down into mine, torches But the real money - perhaps as much as 20 dollars a day - is made hundreds of metres below ground.
These boys have all been doing a man’s work since they were 11.
They’re Aventeros .. frontline workers in the bowels of the earth..
They work in extraordinary conditions - here it is hot and humid...
the stench of dynamite and of smoke pervades the tunnels...
Ray is the youngest - 14 years old, three years a miner - driven on not just by his parents’ poverty but by a dream that is seemingly common to all working children.
06.14 Interview with Ray
I want to able to finish school so I can find a better job and not have to do such hard work.
Interview with boy with torch on his head
My plan is to work to survive. I want to save some money to study and finish a course so that I can become a pilot.
06.36 Night shots, lights, girls, men watching Music
At night, miners emerge from the tunnels of the mountain of exhaustion to watch young girls emerging into their adolescence, shedding their clothes and selling their bodies for the miners’ pleasure.
The girls at the ‘Moutain Valley’ club are no older than 17. This one is just 15.
They’re amongst as many as 60,000 Filipinio girls not yet 18 who are known officially as CSWs - Commercial Sex Workers.
07.21 Moon in sky, children playing, people working For the children of those who do remain on the land, there are more insidious enticements.
A legion of employment agents prowl isolated poverty stricken villages luring youngsters to the big cities with the false promise of easy jobs and good money.
Desperately poor, utterley naive, Manang Marsada has seen 4 of her children leave for the cities before she realised the terrible consequences.
08.02 Interview with Mr Marsada
Four of my children were taken to Manila. I’ve managed to get two back, but two are left behind. My daughter is there and when I tried to get her back the employment agency would not release her unless I gave them 3000 pesos.
V/o
The children’s father is a simple man, easily duped into letting them go, now shamed by his failure to take care of them.
Mr Marsada
I need help now. My daughter is just skin and bones. She ran away from her boss because she was maltreated. I know this from a friend who’s seen her.
08.45 Manila - track of ship, anchor, skyline One of the four Marsada children taken by agents was shipped here 18 months ago.
For a 13 year old country boy, Manila was as alluring and ultimately as illusory as the El Dorado of Dilwalwal.
09.07 This is Marsada’s son Brian.
Brian
The recruiter said Manila was nice and that he would get us jobs, good work and a nice salary.
V/o
Within days of leaving his village in Minanao, Brian Marsada was under lock and key, working in slave labour conditions in a bleach factory.
Brian
We ate like dogs. Our food was rotten sardines mixed with vegetables. If we didn’t get up straight waya in the morning our employers beat us, and our eyes .. we couldn’t see.
09.53 Slow motion shots of boys Music
v/o
Luck turned for Brian when the bleach factory was raided in an operation mounted jointly by the government and charities backed by the UN children’s Fund.
But dogged by a lack of funds, shortage of manpower and corrupt officials, and outwitted by secretive factory owners, such raids are few and far between.
10.34
Interview with Thetis Magahas, International Labour Organisation
Okay bottom line, how much money is put into this. You see very limited resources devoted to this problem. One thing you can say at least they have said something about it. There is legislation on the trafficking of children for employment.
There is legislation for the protection of children, but there are really not enough resources put to the problem, maybe because of competing priorities - so there is really very little that is being done I would say.
10.55 People eating Music
v/o
Like Brian Marsada, this boy has found sanctuary at Kamalayan, a haven for the few children who are rescued.
11.11 Interview with Joel
We were locked in a small room - like a cell with a bunk bed.
V/oJoel has just escaped from a piggery but he tells Kamalayan’s manager the name of the agency that lured him to the city. It is instantly familiar - the Reliance Employment Agency.
11.37 People riding in carts, cycles It’s not hard to find Reliance. Tucked away in a seedy part of Manila the agency has already once had its license suspended for illegally luring children from the islands, but its owner is already back in business.
11.52 Interview with Mr. Alinia
We are worried that the children under 18 who we’ve been told not to recruit will come to Manila anyway by themselves and get into worse trouble.
V/o
Anything but remorseful, Mr Alinia claims he’s no culprit. In fact he says he’s no more victim than the children themselves.
12.21 Interview with Mangahas
I think as long as there is a demand for these children, and as long as there is the supply of children wanting to do this type of work, as long as there is money involved, it’s very hard to look away.
12.34 Boy playing guitar, kids singing Singing
v/o
At Kamalayan, Brian Marsada sings a popular Filipino song. It’s about a son lost to his parents. They’re all children who’ve been rescued yet they are far from being saved.
13.07 Green truck full of people, crossing river, milo truck, Brian riding in cart, Brian walking, hugging boy Music
Children like Brian are trapped by a double jeopardy, for despite their ordeals, they are bitten by the lure of the city. The Brian who travels home to Mindanao with us is no longer the same simple boy that his parents remember.
14.22 Mother, Brian hugs mother Music
Father talks A lost son returns home but it is not the joyeous event that it should be.
Music
The isolated hamlet seems more impoverished than he remembers - he is embarrassed. He is out of place, he is confused.
The change is something his father recognises immediately.
14.57 Mr Marsada
Yes he seems changed. He dresses in a sexy way now. We didn’t have money to buy him clothes.
Interview with Brian
What I would like is for all people to be able to send their children to school so that they can get good jobs - because I think the poor are to be pitied. We are to be pitied.
Music
ENDS.
v/o
It is a day she will want to remember, one truly carefree day. A few hours to help Mari-Lou erase the memory of far too many days of fear.
Music, song
v/o
Mari-Lou was recruited from a peasant village on a distant island to become the maid of a rich businessman in Manila.
Together with Jeanette and Imelda, she found herself locked up, beaten, unpaid and sexually molested by her new boss.
Cora, a government social worker found them after they escaped - sliding eight floors down a rope on the outside of an apartment building.
01.48 Interview with Mari-Lou
I was told mother wanted me home because she was sick, but the agency wouldn’t let me go.
My employer molested us. He touched our breasts. We jsut ran away and cried.
V/o
The girls case has taken months to come to court - it’ll take years to resolve, but in the Philippines the rich and the powerful rarely pay the prices of their crimes.
02.17 Interview with Cora
... he is one of the - I guess - the ‘magic seven’ in the rice cartel and President Ramos knows him very well, so, though he is a very powerful man we keep on praying, you know, that these children must be given justice.
02.46 Merry go round, scenics, boy on bike, people and children working Music
v/o
The story of child labour begins here on islands like Mindanao.
Children have always worked the fields with their parents.
Once they were a source of wealth and security, but after years of rural decline, they’ve become a burden.
Many families that want to stay together and make ends meet have to leave the land, they and their children forced to work in jobs no parent would wish upon them.
03.33 Pan of green hills, village, motorbikes, children looking for mercury, girl with sacks Music
v/o
To escape destitution in Mindanao, 60,000 men, women and children have ascended what’s known as the ‘Mountain of Exhaustion’.
They’ve come on gold rush - to the mountain top town of Dilwalwal.
In the past decade, the mines at Dilwalwal have made millionaires out of fifty Filipinos .. the rest, well, they live on in hope.
Everyone works, everyone dreams.
Instead of going to school, children scavenge all day amongst the detritus of the mines.
04.28 Close up of Ginistro searching for mercury
11 year old Ginisto and his brothers spend their days searching for mercury that’s spilled during the process of extracting gold from the ore.
They earn 4 dollars a day while the mercury pollutes their bodies, rots their brains, stunts their growth.
04.50 Julita makes up to 8 dollars a day working from sun up to sun down collecting lost and discarded sacks from the gold mine.
And Joel can make the same retrieving gold ore that spills beneath the wheels of endless streams of trucks.
05.12 Tracking shot into mine, men and boys going down into mine, torches But the real money - perhaps as much as 20 dollars a day - is made hundreds of metres below ground.
These boys have all been doing a man’s work since they were 11.
They’re Aventeros .. frontline workers in the bowels of the earth..
They work in extraordinary conditions - here it is hot and humid...
the stench of dynamite and of smoke pervades the tunnels...
Ray is the youngest - 14 years old, three years a miner - driven on not just by his parents’ poverty but by a dream that is seemingly common to all working children.
06.14 Interview with Ray
I want to able to finish school so I can find a better job and not have to do such hard work.
Interview with boy with torch on his head
My plan is to work to survive. I want to save some money to study and finish a course so that I can become a pilot.
06.36 Night shots, lights, girls, men watching Music
At night, miners emerge from the tunnels of the mountain of exhaustion to watch young girls emerging into their adolescence, shedding their clothes and selling their bodies for the miners’ pleasure.
The girls at the ‘Moutain Valley’ club are no older than 17. This one is just 15.
They’re amongst as many as 60,000 Filipinio girls not yet 18 who are known officially as CSWs - Commercial Sex Workers.
07.21 Moon in sky, children playing, people working For the children of those who do remain on the land, there are more insidious enticements.
A legion of employment agents prowl isolated poverty stricken villages luring youngsters to the big cities with the false promise of easy jobs and good money.
Desperately poor, utterley naive, Manang Marsada has seen 4 of her children leave for the cities before she realised the terrible consequences.
08.02 Interview with Mr Marsada
Four of my children were taken to Manila. I’ve managed to get two back, but two are left behind. My daughter is there and when I tried to get her back the employment agency would not release her unless I gave them 3000 pesos.
V/o
The children’s father is a simple man, easily duped into letting them go, now shamed by his failure to take care of them.
Mr Marsada
I need help now. My daughter is just skin and bones. She ran away from her boss because she was maltreated. I know this from a friend who’s seen her.
08.45 Manila - track of ship, anchor, skyline One of the four Marsada children taken by agents was shipped here 18 months ago.
For a 13 year old country boy, Manila was as alluring and ultimately as illusory as the El Dorado of Dilwalwal.
09.07 This is Marsada’s son Brian.
Brian
The recruiter said Manila was nice and that he would get us jobs, good work and a nice salary.
V/o
Within days of leaving his village in Minanao, Brian Marsada was under lock and key, working in slave labour conditions in a bleach factory.
Brian
We ate like dogs. Our food was rotten sardines mixed with vegetables. If we didn’t get up straight waya in the morning our employers beat us, and our eyes .. we couldn’t see.
09.53 Slow motion shots of boys Music
v/o
Luck turned for Brian when the bleach factory was raided in an operation mounted jointly by the government and charities backed by the UN children’s Fund.
But dogged by a lack of funds, shortage of manpower and corrupt officials, and outwitted by secretive factory owners, such raids are few and far between.
10.34
Interview with Thetis Magahas, International Labour Organisation
Okay bottom line, how much money is put into this. You see very limited resources devoted to this problem. One thing you can say at least they have said something about it. There is legislation on the trafficking of children for employment.
There is legislation for the protection of children, but there are really not enough resources put to the problem, maybe because of competing priorities - so there is really very little that is being done I would say.
10.55 People eating Music
v/o
Like Brian Marsada, this boy has found sanctuary at Kamalayan, a haven for the few children who are rescued.
11.11 Interview with Joel
We were locked in a small room - like a cell with a bunk bed.
V/oJoel has just escaped from a piggery but he tells Kamalayan’s manager the name of the agency that lured him to the city. It is instantly familiar - the Reliance Employment Agency.
11.37 People riding in carts, cycles It’s not hard to find Reliance. Tucked away in a seedy part of Manila the agency has already once had its license suspended for illegally luring children from the islands, but its owner is already back in business.
11.52 Interview with Mr. Alinia
We are worried that the children under 18 who we’ve been told not to recruit will come to Manila anyway by themselves and get into worse trouble.
V/o
Anything but remorseful, Mr Alinia claims he’s no culprit. In fact he says he’s no more victim than the children themselves.
12.21 Interview with Mangahas
I think as long as there is a demand for these children, and as long as there is the supply of children wanting to do this type of work, as long as there is money involved, it’s very hard to look away.
12.34 Boy playing guitar, kids singing Singing
v/o
At Kamalayan, Brian Marsada sings a popular Filipino song. It’s about a son lost to his parents. They’re all children who’ve been rescued yet they are far from being saved.
13.07 Green truck full of people, crossing river, milo truck, Brian riding in cart, Brian walking, hugging boy Music
Children like Brian are trapped by a double jeopardy, for despite their ordeals, they are bitten by the lure of the city. The Brian who travels home to Mindanao with us is no longer the same simple boy that his parents remember.
14.22 Mother, Brian hugs mother Music
Father talks A lost son returns home but it is not the joyeous event that it should be.
Music
The isolated hamlet seems more impoverished than he remembers - he is embarrassed. He is out of place, he is confused.
The change is something his father recognises immediately.
14.57 Mr Marsada
Yes he seems changed. He dresses in a sexy way now. We didn’t have money to buy him clothes.
Interview with Brian
What I would like is for all people to be able to send their children to school so that they can get good jobs - because I think the poor are to be pitied. We are to be pitied.
Music
ENDS.