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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."
"This situation may lead to chaos and further manipulation of the supply and price of the staple by unscrupulous traders."
While not a guarantee to lower prices in the long run, opening up the rice sector to unbridled imports leaves the country’s rice security at the mercy of an unpredictable and increasingly unreliable world market. This happens as 95 percent of Philippine rice imports come from just two countries whose own domestic production is either slowing down or declining. Globally, rice production has been steadily decelerating in the past four decades.
Price increases are to be expected as the country’s staple food will be solely at the hands of the profit-oriented private sector.
'There is no real rehabilitation if the Manila Bay ends up with profit-driven corporations.'
Without a domestic industry processing our mining products to make our own metals, only the large corporations exporting it reap the most benefit, at the expense of the poor and the environment.
“The birds’ habitat, the people’s source of livelihood and protection from storm surges are being turned into just another concrete jungle for the profit of the very few.”
TRAIN-2 worsens the regressiveness of the tax system on top of what TRAIN-1 has done by reducing corporate income tax collections to increase corporate profits ... The fiscal incentives scheme should most of all be grounded in a strategic vision of national industrialization.
For most Filipino families, especially the poor and those in the lower income brackets, the rising costs of these basic needs mean tremendous pressure on household budgets.
The national debt is equal to 48 percent of the 6.8-percent GDP in the first quarter of this year.
With so much biodiversity and unique ecosystems holding economically valuable natural resources, Asia is an alarming hotspot of biodiversity loss.
The workers vowed to seek justice and pursue their demands for regularization as they prepare for the negotiation with Middleby at the Office of the Secretary of Labor on July 12.
“Middleby, a US-owned corporation, should be ashamed to call itself a world leader if it could not even respect the rights of its workers here and abroad.”
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