Gov’t told: Deregulate sugar imports, kill 300,000 jobs

IN THE DARK Sugar plantation workers, like these ones in Hacienda San Isidro in Silay City, Negros Occidental, will be among the first to suffer from a collapse of the sugar industry. —NONOY CATUGAS/CONTRIBUTOR

ILOILO CITY—Labor groups are protesting a sugar import liberalization plan by the government warning of massive dislocation that would threaten 300,000 jobs in the local sugar industry.

“If this plan will materialize, it will obliterate our local sugar industry that would result in severe economic dislocation of thousands of sugar farmers and workers,” said a manifesto signed by 145 labor union presidents.

“The economic disaster that would occur would be unparalleled in the history of our province,” the manifesto said.

“The projected outcome would be poverty and chronic unemployment and possibly financial panic,” it added.

Lowering costs

The labor groups included the General Alliance of Workers Association (Gawa), National Congress of Unions in the Sugar Industry of the Philippines, Philippine Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Workers Union-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines and Confederation of Independent Unions.

Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno had said the government planned to deregulate the importation of sugar within the year to lower the cost of other goods with sugar as ingredient.

But the labor groups said the plan would do more harm than good.

“About 300,000 sugar and mill workers would be out of jobs,” said Wennie Sancho, Gawa secretary general.

“Small and medium sugar growers, who are dependent on sugar alone, would be forced to sell or abandon their lands,” Sancho said.

‘Quick fix solution’

The labor groups said the plan was a “quick fix solution” drawn up “without considering the implications.”

Sugar producers had also decried Diokno’s pronouncement.

The labor group’s manifesto said opening up the Philippine market to unregulated sugar importation “would be a fatal mistake.”

Resist plan

“This would result in despair, uncertainty and disorder in the lives of the people,” the manifesto said.

The groups vowed to resist the plan.

They also called on all workers to close ranks to fight the plan “to avert the multiple economic and social problems of varying magnitude if the sugar industry will collapse.”

“We will hold protest actions if the government will not listen to us,” Sancho told the Inquirer.

Last Wednesday, the Senate passed a resolution, asking Malacañang to drop the plan.

Among those who signed it were Senators Juan Miguel Zubiri, Sonny Angara, Nancy Binay, JV Ejercito, Sherwin Gatchalian, Richard Gordon, Loren Legarda, Koko Pimentel, Joel Villanueva and Cynthia Villar.

“The deregulated entry of subsidized sugar into the Philippine market will be disastrous,” the Senate resolution said.

If the Philippine sugar industry collapsed because of imports, the resolution said poverty was sure to rise in sugar-producing areas which would become hotbeds of rebellion and crimes.