President Rodrigo Duterte. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/JOAN BONDOC
SOME members of the Catholic clergy have lauded the “simplicity” expected at President Duterte’s State of the Nation Address to Congress today.
“It’s a welcome development. While the rest of the country is mired in poverty, any ostentatious display of wealth, be it through fashion, cars and jewelr[y] for our public servants smacks of indifference and insensitivity toward the plight of the poor Filipinos they promised to serve,” said Fr. Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the Public Affairs Office of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
“President Duterte should be commended for his prudence, sensitivity and simplicity regarding the matter,” Secillano added.
Bishop Ruperto Santos of Balanga, Bataan, said it was “very praiseworthy” of the President to remind elected officials that the State of the Nation was a “statement of plans and programs of services for the people and not their fashion statements.”
The labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) said it wanted to hear from Mr. Duterte concrete plans for fulfilling his commitment to workers to end contractualization in the country.
“We want to hear him announce immediate and actual measures to curb contractual labor such as signing an executive order regularizing all workers employed under contractual employment schemes for more than six months, junking of Department of Labor and Employment Order 18-A, which institutionalized contractualization under the Aquino administration, and ordering the ‘supermajority’ to prioritize the passage of House Bill 556, or the Regular Employment Bill, filed by Anakpawis party-list,” the groups said in a statement.
“We welcome the Duterte administration’s firm commitment to end [contractualization]. However, we also urge President Duterte to also ban all contractual employment schemes. Both the legal job contracting and the illegal labor-only contracting should be banned, as they both violate basic workers’ rights and subject workers to the worst forms of labor exploitation,” it added.
“We also urge President Duterte to support Filipino workers’ clamor for the implementation of a national minimum wage of P750 a day for private sector employees and P16,000 monthly for government employees,” the group said.
The Kilusan Para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan (Katarungan), meanwhile, urged Mr. Duterte to include in his speech the release the multibillion-peso coconut levy fund.
Jansept Geronimo, spokesperson for Katarungan, called on Mr. Duterte to also announce the creation of a coconut farmers trust fund.
“With his supermajority allies in both [the House and the Senate], the passage of any bill for the creation of the [trust fund] is sure,” Geronimo said.
The P73 billion in recovered coconut levy fund is expected to benefit more than 20 million farmers in 21,000 coconut-producing villages across the country.
Sen. Francis Pangilinan has refiled the Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Bill that would establish a coconut levy trust fund.
The measure would require “a complete accounting and inventory of the coco levy assets” and their conversion into a “perpetual trust fund that will be used for the development of the coconut industry.”
Danny Carranza, Katarungan secretary general, appealed to Mr. Duterte to certify Pangilinan’s bill.
“We also hope he’ll exert all efforts to mobilize his allies in Congress to translate ‘change is coming’ into propoor legislation and action,” Carranza said. With a report from Delfin T. Mallari Jr., Inquirer Southern Luzon/TVJ
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