The Philippine government is committed to address the child labor problem in the country, a senior government official said on Wednesday.

Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda, in a news briefing, said that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) are specifically focused on the campaign to reduce child labor incidence by 75 percent by 2015.

Lacierda cited that 7.5 million children are directly benefiting from the DSWD-administered conditional cash transfer ( CCT) program.

"We continue to invest in children to keep them healthy and in school. There are CCT-parent beneficiaries attending family development sessions where they are taught good and responsible parenthood and are also taught why children should be kept healthy and in school and not working," he said.

The DOLE, he said has a national campaign to declare 80 villages or five villages per region as child-labor free by the end of this year.

A 2011 survey of the National Statistics Office has shown that there were about 5.5 million children, aged 5-17, who were working and of the figure, almost 3 million were engaged in hazardous labor.