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“The policy of globalization opens up our economy to trade and investment of big, foreign business, to be run as business and to benefit only the few, while majority are impoverished.”
Prices of goods and services have doubled or increased by 110 percent between 1997 and 2012. Meanwhile, the individual income tax brackets have remained unchanged.
The Philippine Coconut Authority’s (PCA) 2014 to 2023 road map has identified about a million hectares of potential oil palm farms. Ninety eight percent of these areas are in Mindanao.
“We OFWs are overly fleeced when we’re just striving hard so our loved ones in the Philippines will at least get a taste of imported products, and here the Customs will focus the heat on it? Meanwhile they’re ignoring the huge boxes and containers of smuggled goods, why don’t they focus their attention on that instead of the poor OFWs?”
Seven out of ten Filipinos rate themselves as poor, according to the latest survey of independent think tank Ibon Foundation.
"it does not take a genius to figure out that we have been lied to. We have been scammed and held up by corporations and our own government, all in the name of private profits and debt incurred by the government due to an onerous build-lease transfer (BLT) contract with the Metro Rail Transit Corporation's (MRTC)."
In its public launching, May 28, the newly formed Philippine Land Reform Movement (PLRM) said Aquino’s Charter change will worsen the widespread land grabbing, land-use conversion, and forced eviction of peasants and rural poor in the countryside.
Genuine land reform would result in genuinely broad-based overall economic growth, rapid poverty reduction and genuine food security.
“It has been six months since the Aquino government imposed the fare hikes, yet the public is seeing a deterioration, not improvement, in the train systems’ services.”
“The Aquino government wants to make the production of cheap labor even more systematic with the K+12.”
Based on world market trends, fuel energy available to power producers now cost more than 50-percent lower. As such, the Malampaya shutdown “clearly should not result to additional costs, and thus, (there is) no basis for any power rate hike.”
'The hikes sprang from the oil companies’ “imagination and greed,” which the Oil Deregulation Law gives them license to use.'
"It just goes to show that this administration is hell-bent on pursuing the interests of his bosses. And I'm not talking about the Filipino people, but the capitalists who run the MRTC and LRMC." – Train Riders Network (TREN)
“It is disappointing that no government agency, like DOLE, educated us on SAP [Social Amelioration Program) and its cash bonus because obviously, the millers and planters would not likely place our interest ahead of theirs.”
“While we should look for solutions if there is an impending crisis, we should guard against short term knee jerk solutions that make energy costly.” – Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares
“With more than a million passengers riding all three lines a day, the MRT and LRT generate more than enough income for their operations and maintenance. That’s the reason why big businesses are drooling over and trying to buy them.”
Under the Aquino government, the running MRT trains went down from almost 73 to just about 43. MRT3 workers said that even if some of the remaining trains have problems in its machine or manifesting technical troubles (like in its doors or controls or motor), it is still being used or inserted among others that are still functioning. Worse, workers have to make do with discarded parts because of the lack of spare parts, which was supposed to be provided by maintenance contractors.
See also: ‘MRT3 not milking cow but public service,’ groups tell Transportation Sec. Abaya
“The train accidents are a textbook illustration of what happens when profit rules over what is supposedly for social service.” – Sammy Malunes, RILES Network
“It seems that President Aquino and his cabinet will blame anyone and everyone except itself on the problems being encountered by the country, which they themselves were remiss in addressing. From all indications they are mind conditioning the public for a big power rate hike.” – Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares
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