House Ad Hoc panel working full swing to pass Bangsamoro Basic Law

Ad Hoc Comm. on Bangsamoro Chair Rufus Rodriguez conducting its first meeting with the 8 Vice-Chairs and its Secretariat 2014Sep11

While the House plenary conducts marathon sessions zeroing in on the proposed 2015 P2.606-Trillion national budget, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte today declared "We have set the ball rolling in creating this Ad Hoc committee and it's systems go" for the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law.

Hon. Feliciano Belmonte, Jr."The passage of a Bangsamoro Basic Law is our fundamental role as legislators recognizing and responding to the call of our diverse culture as Filipinos. It is also our contribution to a global quest for genuine and sustainable peace," Belmonte stressed.

Wasting no time, the House Ad Hoc Committee to review, evaluate and proposed legislation relative to the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, chaired by Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, has approved its Rules of Procedure to guide its deliberations.

"We are tired of war. We cannot afford to lose time. We want peace," Chairman Rodriguez exclaimed after their organizational meeting Tuesday morning, echoing the sentiments of lawmakers especially those from Mindanao.

Gratified by the enthusiasm shown by his colleagues during the initial Ad Hoc meeting, Rodriguez revealed that they agreed to hold open public hearings, starting September 24 until December 17, five days a week, with hearings to be conducted in Zamboanga, Zamboanga Sibugay, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Marawi, among others.

Hon. Rufus B. Rodriguez"We have decided to give one day for each of these areas to give ample time for concerned people in the said areas to participate actively in the deliberations," Rodriguez added.

The 75-member Ad Hoc Committee represents leaders and members of the majority coalition and five members of the minority group.

During the interim, the committee will be completing the line-up of resource person-invitees or guest who could give valuable insights and proposal to improve or fine-tune the provision in the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law contained in HB 4994.

HB 4994 is entitled: "An Act providing for the Basic Law for the Bangsamoro and abolishing the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, repealing for the purpose Republic Act No. 9054, entitled 'An Act to strengthen and expand the Organic Act for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao,' and Republic Act No. 6743, entitled 'An Act providing for the Organic Act for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao,' and for other purposes."

It is interesting to note that the authors of the proposed law consists of the leaders of the Majority coalition led by Speaker Belmonte, among them are: Deputy Speakers Henedina Abad, Giorgidi Aggabao, Sergio Apostol, Pangalian Balindong, Carlos Padilla and Roberto Puno; with Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II; and Reps. Mel Senen Sarmiento; Enrique Cojuangco; Mark Llandro Mendoza; Eleandro Jesus Madrona; Elpidio Barzaga, Jr.; Antonio Lagdameo, Jr.; Rolando Andaya, Jr.; Nicanor Briones; and Raymond Democrito Mendoza.

Recalling recent events, the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), signed on March 27, 2014, signalled the end of the decades-long armed conflict in Mindanao that has posed major setbacks to the full progress and development of the country, Belmonte and his co-authors pointed out.

"The negotiated CAB outlines the mechanisms, processes, and modalities through which the parties aim to establish and entrench a regime of peace, development, social justice, and the rule of law in the conflict-ridden areas and communities in Southern Philippines," the authors stressed.

Furthermore, inspired by the constitutional foundation on autonomous regions under the 1987 Constitution, the CAB prescribes the design for a new political entity to build upon the vital reforms introduced by the current government of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), they added.

"The proposed Bangsamoro entity will enhance existing systems and procedures, as well as establish a new set of institutional arrangements and modalities between the central government and the autonomous government with respect to power-sharing, wealth- and revenue-sharing, transitional aspects, and normalization," Belmonte assured.

Chairman Rodriguez said that, among other important considerations, his committee is will never compromise on the issue of constitutionality of all the provisions embodied in the proposed Basic law.

"We will make sure that it will be a win-win framework for all Filipinos," Rodriguez stressed. - by Dionisio P. Tubianosa, Media Relations Service-PRIB

TUCP calls for ERC, Napocor revamp

MANILA, Philippines - Labor group Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP)- Nagkaisa on Tuesday expressed support for the granting of emergency powers to President Benigno Aquino III to address the power crisis.

The group's support entails the condition that the proposed solution will not drive up electricity rates and that there be a revamp of both the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

“TUCP-Nagkaisa will support the president but the solutions proposed should not punish workers and their families with an increase in power rates. We insist that the Department of Energy (DOE) now present their tariff simulations and cost-impact scenarios to the public so we will know what to do,” TUCP executive director Luis Corral.

TUCP-Nagkaisa accused PSALM of criminal negligence for not including in its budget for operations the pending case of the illegally terminated workers of the National Power Corporation.

The recent Commission on Audit report on both the financial and operational audit of the ERC showed it has failed to inspect 125 distribution utilities as to possible metering violations, allowing an overcharging of the bills of millions of customers.

“We will no longer tolerate the intellectual dishonesty and corruption in the DOE, the ERC and PSALM. Workers and their families will no longer be the whipping boys to increase the corporate profits of the power industry up. Workers need also their fair share now,” Corral said.

He noted that while it is difficult to obtain a wage adjustment in Congress and the regional wage boards, it is so easy for the power sector to obtain an increase in their power rates before the ERC.

“The ERC even allows Meralco (Manila Electric Company) to charge its customers for future expenditures and projected operational costs, three years into the future. In effect, the consumer is made to advance for the capital expenditures of Meralco," Corral said.

The TUCP-Nagkaisa decried the failure of the PSALM to factor in the case of the illegally terminated NPC employees.

“Under their Operational Management Agreement, PSALM is in charge of maintaining the assets to answer for the stranded costs of NPC. The biggest elephant in the room was the pending Supreme Court case involving the workers of the NPC. It was the biggest item that would have to be paid,” TUCP-Nagkaisa spokesperson Alan Tanjusay said.

He said the TUCP-Nagkaisa expressed alarm that some of the solutions listed by the DOE are gas turbines and diesel-powered generation sets.

“This will drive the power rates up. We have already advised DOE to do tariff simulations first because the power crisis cannot just be defined as a lack of power supply, it is also about uncompetitive power rates. Ordinary workers and their families are the ones being punished by for the lack of forwards planning of DOE,” Tanjusay said. - By Dennis Carcamo (philstar.com)

With no solution in sight, power crisis will spillover 2016 - TUCP

QUEZON CITY – Without an acceptable and genuine national strategy addressing the forthcoming energy crisis in 2015, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) is seeing more brownouts to happen in 2016.

TUCP warned that the real extent of the problem will kick in 2016 and beyond if the current Department of Energy (DOE) secretary resort to quick fix and expensive band aid solutions such as renting power barges and generator sets, gas turbines and effect the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) – a program by the DOE allowing malls to run their generator sets with consumers paying for their maintenance and operation costs.

Under these schemes, TUCP insists the generating companies and their distribution utility will merrily do their supply and demand games while continuously burdening consumers with high power rates and more brownouts. The implications for workers who will be laid off, for jobs that will never be created, for imperiled businessmen, and for the poor consumers are disaster.

“We are alarmed at the silence of the government to directly and genuinely address the power crisis. The silence of Secretary Petilla is deafening. After his ‘emergency powers’ call was made, he is now backpedalling and trying to portray the problem as less than it is. Either he is the ‘boy who cried wolf’ or simply trying to place a band-aid fix because he was unable to make a case for surgery to the president, he clearly has not grasped the true extent of the problem,” said TUCP executive director Louie Corral.

Corral warned that the ILP program is just a stopgap measure. He said Meralco customers will now be financially obligated to cover the costs for Messrs. Sy and Gokongwei running their mall generators for their own use on the theory that by freeing Meralco to keep the lights on in other areas that these oligarchs are doing consumers a favor.

“We are going to end up subsidizing their malls. But the 2015 power deficit is just the tip of the iceberg. The failure of both the DOE to address the policy gap now makes it inevitable that the crisis will repeat itself in 2016 and onwards,” Corral emphasized.

The major policy gap is that government does not incentivize the entry of additional and cheaper power capacity if it continues to allow Meralco to enter ‘sweetheart’ bilateral contracts from their preferred suppliers which will always mean low reserves to ensure high power rates.

To bring in genuine competition and additional supply, TUCP is proposing that there is enough leeway in EPIRA for DOE to mandate that henceforth all the distribution utilities such as the market-dominant Meralco, controlling 74%of the Luzon market, to source their power supply every 3 years from international public bidding held under the supervision of the DOE and ERC.

TUCP suspects Meralco is again behind the power crisis. Meralco allegedly hostaged its consumers to their Redondo coal plant supplier in Subic. When the 600 MW coal plant was stymied by the Supreme Court issuance of Writ of Kalikasan and the objections of environmental groups, Meralco could have chosen 2 to 3 years ago to take their supply from AES Masinloc which also wanted to set up 600 MW plant or even from GN Power in Quezon. Instead they insisted on Redondo.

With 74% of the market share in Luzon, Meralco is proverbial ‘only game in town’ and if they chose any other source, this would have prevented the power shortfall for 2015. “Our call is therefore to clip this self-serving option of their subject the choice of who will supply them to international public bidding under DOE supervision,” he added.

- Samar News

Think tank urges gov’t to relax wage rules

Applicants look at the list of jobs at the Labor Day Job Fair by the Department of Labor and Employment at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City on May 1, 2014. A government think tank on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, urged policymakers to relax wage regulations and allow small and medium businesses to pay salaries below the minimum wage when they hire unskilled workers. INQUIRER PHOTO/RAFFY LERMA

BAGUIO CITY—A government think tank on Tuesday urged policymakers to relax wage regulations and allow small and medium businesses to pay salaries below the minimum wage when they hire unskilled workers.

The Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) said the imposition of a minimum wage had worsened unemployment, a conclusion reached by its labor policy analysis of Philippine job expansion and development.

The unemployment rate in the country stands at 7 percent.

Dr. Aniceto Orbeta Jr., PIDS senior research fellow who participated in the study, said the agency was tasked to examine labor policies, which he described as “tools [that] are not working.”

The policy changes that PIDS is recommending should help reduce poverty, he said, by increasing the chances of poor unskilled workers to land jobs.

“For them, this is a matter of survival,” Orbeta said.

He said, however, that PIDS has yet to study the impact of a flexible or diminished wage regulation on the country’s commitment to international labor standards.

Asean integration

PIDS also needs to see whether its proposals and presumptions about the labor market will remain applicable when the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) become an integrated market next year, he said.

Integration may allow more Filipinos to leave for jobs in Southeast Asian countries once border regulations are lifted and uniform Asean work and skills standards are applied, said Myrna Pablo, Cordillera regional director of the Department of Trade and Industry.

The minimum wage and other labor regulations are designed to protect workers from abusive employers and to give them bargaining power when seeking better wages, Orbeta said.

But citing the 2007 minimum wage increase as an example, he said the PIDS labor policy analysis found that the rise reduced the probability of an employee retaining his job or an applicant landing a job by 8 percent to 22 percent that year.

Employers end up hiring veteran workers instead of fresh graduates, who now compose the bulk of the unemployed work force, Orbeta said.

Consequently, he said, a typical household income is also reduced when at least one member of the family, who is eligible for employment, ends up jobless due to the restricted hiring opportunities.

The wage increase has little impact on big businesses, but has been detrimental to smaller businesses with 10 employees or fewer, Orbeta said.

A mandated minimum wage “hurts the employment probability of the young, female and inexperienced workers most,” he said, so employers must be allowed “to hire low-skilled and poor workers who want to voluntarily opt out of the mandatory minimum wage norm.”

He said these workers could be supported by special measures to improve the value of their smaller income, including adjustments in tax rates or other ways that would increase their pay.

Workers’ protection

Alan Tanjusay, a spokesman for the TUCP, said the minimum wage was the minimum standard to protect workers’ interests and improve the quality of labor.

“If there is no minimum wage, workers will be very vulnerable to abuse and oppression,” Tanjusay said. “There has to be a standard such as the minimum wage. Otherwise, we will revert to the age of slavery.”

Another labor group criticized the PIDS study as an “alibi for the government and employers to reduce wages further” and as a “guise for contractualization.”

“The present minimum wage levels are already below living standards, according to the [National Economic and Development Authority] and yet they want to suppress it further,” said Gie Relova of Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino.

“Our experience shows that during wage increase deliberations, government and employer representatives gang up on the labor representative. Never has the government representative sided with the labor sector,” Relova said.

That, Herrera said, is “normally the case, because democracy works through pressure and the greater pressure is exerted by business.”

PIDS’ views not new

Julius Cainglet, assistant vice president for research, communication, networking and project development of the Federation of Free Workers (FFW), said PIDS’ views were not new.

“The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have been saying that for years. The think tank’s research seems wanting as it failed to consider the real state of workers,” Cainglet said in a text message.

“The minimum wage is but a meager social protection for workers. Present minimum wage rates in Metro Manila could not even cover half the required income needed to afford your family a decent life. Besides, the minimum wage is much smaller in the provinces where a lot of investors set up manufacturing plants,” he said.

“Abolishing the minimum wage would work only if workers have a voice, that is if the majority of them are unionized. We know how employers do everything to bust unions. Without a minimum wage to bank on and a union to fight for their rights to just wages, benefits and better working conditions, the government is opening the floodgates for even more exploitation of workers. We will end up with workers receiving alms and getting employed for no more than five months,” he said.

High cost of doing business

“What is pushing down employment is the high cost of doing business. For one, the country’s power rates are the highest in Asia. Add the fact that there are mounting fees, permits and impossible requirements when applying for a new business or renewing permits for the same. It is a nightmare, in fact,” Cainglet said.

“The FFW believes that this is what curtails employment more and not the minimum wage. We would want to abolish the wage boards for the right reasons like for being insensitive to the needs of workers. But removing the minimum wage right now will only deprive workers even more of their just share in the country’s economic growth,” he said.

Roger Soluta, secretary general of Kilusang Mayo Uno, said PIDS economists were serving the interests of foreign capitalists in blaming the minimum wage for the low employment rate.

“It’s irritating that to justify doing away with the minimum wage, they would use that argument,” Soluta said.– By Vincent Cabreza, Erika Sauler and Tina G. Santos Inquirer