• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
An umbrella organization of labor groups in Negros Occidental has called on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to address opposition to sugar import liberalization, wage increases, and allow investigators of the International Criminal Court to investigate extra judicial killings in the country, during his State Of the Nation Address on July 24.
In this way, justice will be served to the Filipino people who shall remember PBBM as the dispenser of justice and defender of the poor and the oppressed, according to Wennie Sancho, secretary general of General Alliance of Workers Association.
This will also help to gradually eliminate the public perception on the abuses of power during the Martial Law era, which was declared by the late President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., and will restore trust and confidence to the Office of the President, Sancho added.
In a statement, Sancho said GAWA is pushing for a substantial wage increase for all workers in the private sector in Western Visayas, of at least P500 a day to prevent the continuing erosion of their purchasing power and for them to cope with the high cost of living.
This is consonance with the Constitutional provision in Article 13, Section 8 on Social Justice and Human Rights which states that “all workers shall be entitled to security of tenure, humane conditions of work and a living wage,” and in the Labor Employment Plan of the Department of Labor and Employment that wage increase is necessary and the workers should have quality jobs and better salary for them to be more productive, he added.
As to the Sugar Import Liberalization, Sancho said the penchant of the government to import huge volumes of sugar without proper consultation from the stakeholders, particularly the marginal farmers and the agrarian reform beneficiaries, will weaken and ultimately kill the sugar industry.
“This economic disaster due to sugar import liberalization policy of the government would benefit the sugar traders and smugglers, at the expense of sugar workers and consumers,” he further said.
If PBBM would like to project that he is not like his father, or at least not a dictator like his father, Sancho said he would allow the International Criminal Court to probe extra judicial killings, in relation to the war on drugs of the previous administration of Rodrigo Duterte.
PBBM should initiate an “open door” to ICC investigators in order to give justice to the victims of EJK and their families, whose human rights were violated by the government officials who had been sworn to “serve and protect” them, he added.*
