ADVERTISEMENT
"This [#BarangayDamayan] aims to unite citizens while we undergo this public health crisis. It is very evident how the government has not provided urgent solutions such as free mass testing, accessible health care and assurance of job security amid the community quarantine. We see these as more tangible solutions rather than troop deployment."
For Ibon, the widening gap between the rich and the poor illustrates best the state of the Philippine economy. The P4-trillion net worth of 40 richest Filipinos is equivalent to the income of 54 million Filipinos.
"It will condemn to economic bankruptcy the sugar industry’s 80,000 planters and the employment and livelihood loss of its 700,000 agricultural workers, 26,000 mill workers and some 2 million downstream dependents."
For Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA), Duterte’s SONA only renewed his administration’s commitment to fully implement “anti-poor, anti-farmer and anti-worker policies.”
“Definitely, the airport city project is a part of the government’s Destruct-Destruct-Destruct scheme that primarily caters to business interests and conveniently leaves out genuine development prospects for the people."
The joint venture, says the BEU and others against the joint venture, would turn water from a natural resource to a profit-generating commodity, to the detriment of consumers. For starters, the union says, a 12 percent value-added tax will be automatically tacked onto water bills once the deal is closed.
“Duterte's economic policies is creating a ‘debt bomb’ that will explode in the near future.“
"Increasing the national minimum wage is possible and not something that will burden the businesses.
The Philippines has now embarked on import liberalization of its staple – a dangerous path not just for the country’s food security, but more importantly, for that elusive economic development.
Focusing on just Manila Water diverts the issue away from privatization as the central issue in, and underlying reason behind, the artificial shortage. As such, it also has the effect of absolving government of responsibility when in fact, the biggest accountability in all this lies with government for abandoning its duty to ensure water for the people.
“The Duterte administration is exploiting the vulnerability of Metro Manila residents who are justly demanding accessible and efficient water services.”
Unionists have defended their protest camp from at least four instances of forced demolition while in Manila.
“San Miguel’s P1-billion rehab is highly suspicious because it comes alongside its push for its Aerotropolis and Expressway-Dike reclamation projects across Northern Manila Bay." -- KAlikasan PNE
“If anyone had rights over the Manila Bay, it is the Filipino people, and if it is to serve any purpose, it should be for the benefit of the general population, and not an elite few.”
What is common in the stories of the residents in various coastal sitios of Bulacan is that the “news” about their impending displacement is coming to them in trickles of information packaged in a threat.
While the government is riding on the popular call for cleanup of Manila Bay, harnessing free labor of volunteers for fishing out thrash in Manila Bay, it is, on the other hand, disproportionately blaming the poor and seeking their demolition in favor of reclamation plans and other real estate development.
“The latest round of price hikes will definitely hurt consumers including low to middle-income earners and especially poor sectors like farmers, fisherfolk and urban poor.”
“It's the beginning of the end of the local rice industry. Even with the rice industry enhancement fund, the local rice industry do not stand a chance with massive rice imports.”
Farmers and advocates warn of the negative impacts of rice tariffication.
“The Rice Industry Development Act (RIDA) bill seeks to lift our rice industry from a multi-dimensional crisis that wasted away its productive capability, stunted its development and forestalled the country’s attainment of food security."
A community of readers and supporters that help us sustain our operations through microdonations for as low as $1.