Pathetic Backbreaking Labor at P63 a Day

By Mortz C. Ortigoza
I thought the seemingly inhuman backbreaking job of manually crushing stone happened during the time the International Labour Organisation (ILO) denounced the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention of 1999 when women and kids were seen chipping stones with hammers for quarry purposes in Sub Saharan Africa like in Benin (one of the 20 poorest countries in the world), Nigeria, and Burkina Faso.
When I was cruising in a lorry the Pan-Philippines Highway at Catbalogan City in  Western Samar Province last March 6, 2020, I posted with caption photos of shacks where I commented how small the huts and how poor the people who lived at the seaside and near the stretches of the national highway there.



SORRY stone breakers at a village in Calbayog City, Western Samar I interviewed recently about their sad plight where they earn each P63 a day in a backbreaking work. Because of the scarcity of jobs in the Eastern Province these people are forced to hammer stones to smithereens for construction materials. From left is the couple Dionelda and Emilio Gallardo.

"Madami magagandang dalaga diyan malapit sa San Isidro (town), Samar (Province) kaya lang taga basag ng bato sa tabi ng highway (A lot of pretty ladies there near San Isidro town, Samar Province however they worked as stone breakers near the highway,"Roberto "Jun" Alba, Jr., a pal and owner of one of the two air conditioned wing van hauler trucks’ convoy, that I rode from Cotabato to Luzon through Western Samar Province texted me so I can drop by and see how abject poverty rear there ugly heads there when he saw me documenting at Facebook the second day of the three days land trip I had recently from M’lang town in Cotabato Province to his motor pool in La Loma, Quezon City.


But his truck driver Boyd Ugbana, another town mate, butted in when I told him those sorry lady stone crushers.
“You don’t have to go to San Isidro, look out there men and women hammering the chunks of stone taken by a hydraulic breaker hammers  mounted at a backhoe loader from the carved concrete parts of the mountain area,” Boyd nudged me to the two sides of the highway.

After slowly passing some stone breakers at a village in Calbayog City I asked Boyd to stop when I saw two couples in their 60s but looked gaunt on their age due to lack of nourishment because of the pathetic economy they are snagged in there.

Western Samar Province, where the city is located, has 780, 481 population based on the 2015 Census.

The province has 24 towns, two cities, and two congressional districts.

While approaching them, I fished out from my black leather wallet several bills and introduced myself as media man in Luzon that I brought merienda monies for them.

Of course the quid pro quo for them was to answer my search how they engaged in a such a crude servitude that could hurt their hands.

“We need this work to survive,” Waray Emilio Gallardo immediately told me in Cebuano when he heard me speak in that vernacular used by some towns and cities of neighboring province’s Southern Leyte where we cruised a night before.

Dionelda Reyes Gallardo, wife of Emilio, said that a businessman who bought the splintered stones from them fetched the buying price at P500 per cubic meter. The stones were chopped into chunks from the carved concrete part of the mountain rich province

“We could finish splintering eight cubic meters of stones to gravel for two weeks,” Emilio added who was behind countless mounds of black pebbles, shards, and stones.

Son of a gun. ILO almost two decades ago assailed the government of Benin because it allowed minors and women to work in a hazardous environment that could inflict them with life-threatening respiratory illnesses and danger of injury from flying chips of stone or from rock falls.

“We sell a basin of gravel to locals for 150 CFA francs (US $30 cents) and eight basins to other people for 1,500 CFA francs (US $3),” said Otchoun. “I can earn between 10,000 and 15,000 CFA francs (US $20 and $30) a month,” as quoted by The New Humanitarian on its article titled: Children crushing stones into gravel to get through school.

A third of Benin’s 7.5 million people live below the poverty line, according to the United Nations Human Development Index, and population growth continues to exceed economic growth.

Let’s go back to Samar.

“KAWAWA SILA.These male and female stone crushers, iyong iba as young as 13 years old pregnant girls, in Calbayog City, Samar manually break a stone to splinters with a hammer for them to sell one cubic meter of it to businessmen for P500. Traders sell the stones for aesthetics of the pathway and houses of buyers, as gravel for concrete highways, rip-rap of riven banks, and buildings . Dionelda Reyes Gallardo, one of the hired hands, told me that each of them quartet will divide the sum by P125 each for two days work on a cubic of gravel. Geez, that's P63 a day for each of them with that back breaking work. "Matagal mahirap itong trabaho namin na bumiyak ng eight cubic (meters) na bato. Minsan naiipit ng martilyo ang mga kamay namin," Dionelda husband Emilio Gallardo told this writer who interviewed them behind the mounds of chunks of stones,” I immediately posted at Facebook for all and sundry to see the texts and photos of these poor souls.

This after I embarked on the Japanese made Fuso truck (You think the Chink eyed hated Chinese already controlled the lorries in the country with their cheap trucks, not in the Visayas where I saw contractors used South Korean made trucks) that carried my countless sacks of sweet Mindanao pomelos I bought in my rustic M’lang town, Cotabato Province for the unquenchable appetites of the residents of the jungle “asphalt” coastal city Dagupan.

My impression of the province, based on the sparsely location of their houses mostly huts and tiny shacks, the Warays are rich on coconut trees and the wide sea but the place lacks the ubiquity of big concrete houses one can see on the stretches of the national highways of Laguna, Batangas, Pampanga, Tarlac, and Pangasinan Provinces.

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“Hmm, that’s why the guerrilla arm’s New People’s Army of the Commies are strong in the boondocks and mountain there,” after I saw two feet by two feet tarps hanging on some trees at the stretch of the towns of Santa Rita to San Sebastian and Tarangan to Santa Margarita opposing the new Anti-Terror Law of the government.

“How can they be progressive here. They are dependent on coconut trees where they did not even put fertilizers despite the low prices of the product when they sell them to the compradors,” Driver Ronron, a former Army tank driver trained at Camp Aquino in Tarlac who once lived in the Eastern Visaya Province, explained to me in Ilonggo while he cooked the tahong (mussel) we bought at Jiabong town dubbed as the Tahong Capital of the Philippines.

According to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the 4000 hectare mussel farming area in Western Samar is the biggest in the country .

Boyd said that cabaret girls and menial job workers in Metro Manila come from the province because jobs there are scarce.

“Hmm, just like in Cotabato and Maguindanao Provinces investors are hesitant to pour their monies that could spike jobs there because of the uncertainty of the peace and order situation,” I retorted.

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(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pahngasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)