ARMM employees await dialogue on employment status in new Bangsamoro region

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Career service employees of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) eagerly look forward to a planned dialogue with lawmakers on the status of their employment in relation with the ARMM’s proposed replacement with a new Bangsamoro entity.

Members of the ARMM’s rank-and-file personnel, whose appointments were screened and attested by the Civil Service Commission (CSC), want officials of the commission to participate in the dialogue, too.

Lawyer Laisa Alamia, executive secretary of ARMM, on Thursday said Trade Union Congress of the Philippines Partylist Rep. Raymond Democrito Mendoza announced here last week that legislators will dialogue with regional officials and employees on employment concerns amid the impending creation of the Bangsamoro outfit based on the final peace compact between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Mendoza was among members of Congress that held consultations last week in Cotabato City and nearby provinces on the legal ramifications of the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), the enabling measure for the creation of a Bangsamoro government based on the government-MILF March 27, 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.

“The supposed meeting was to take place this week. It must have been reset. We are just waiting for a notice toward that end,” Alamia said.

Employees of ARMM’s more than 40 line agencies and support offices, whose functions and powers were devolved by Malacanang to the regional government based on the region’s charter, Republic Act 9054, are apprehensive the transition, from the autonomous region to the MILF-led Bangsamoro government, will render them jobless.

Alamia said while ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman has continuously been assuring regional employees of protection from the CSC, their feelings and sentiments are something beyond the governor’s control.

“Even so, there is overwhelming support for the peace process from the ARMM’s personnel,” Alamia said.

Last week’s congressional consultations on the draft BBL in Central Mindanao were presided over by Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, chair of the ad-hoc House committee tasked to enact the bill into law.

The ARMM government has no fewer than 30,000 employees, more than half of them working in the region’s Department of Education. - By John Unson (philstar.com)

Cebu lawmakers: Consult more on the Bangsamoro proposal

Rep Raymond Menoza with BBL Ad Hoc Com hearing in Cotabato City - Oct 23

CEBU - Six Cebuanos in Congress said Saturday they support the government’s dream of a lasting peace in Mindanao, but would like to hear what their constituents think of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law.

Public consultations in Cebu may be held next month or in January 2015, said Representative Raymond Democrito Mendoza (Party-list, TUCP), one of the co-authors of House Bill 4994. He joined the 75 Mindanao district and party-list lawmakers for a public hearing in Cotabato City last Oct. 23.

“What is important is that we come to the table and try to find another solution, since the old solution which was pursued in the past 40 years has not ended the war,” Mendoza said.

Elections in 2016

Both the House and Senate versions of the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law were submitted last month, six months after the historic signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro by the Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The Aquino administration is working on the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law, as well as the plebiscite in the Bangsamoro core territories, before the end of 2015, so that the first set of officials can be elected in 2016.

Five of nine Cebuano district representatives said they have yet to go over the details of the draft law and consult constituents, and could not yet categorically say whether or not they will vote for the bill. (Mendoza, the only Cebuano co-author of the bill, does not represent a district, but a party-list organization.)

Autonomy

“Thousands have risked their lives to achieve an elusive goal: peace. The Bangsamoro Basic Law is geared to give life to the constitutional provision of granting local autonomy, especially to those areas where the government has failed to provide adequate service to the people,” said Representative Gerald Anthony Gullas (Cebu Province, First District).

But while he said he was inclined to vote in favor of the bill, “nevertheless, Congress, especially those who drafted the bill, must examine piece by piece its provisions so as not to make any offensive stance against the Constitution,” Gullas also said.

Representative Benhur Salimbangon (Cebu Province, Fourth District) said he needs to study it further, having received only recently a copy of the framework agreement.

“This (Bangsamoro law) will open up the possibility of shifting our form of government to a federal one,” said Salimbangon.

According to the drafts, the Bangsamoro Government, as an autonomous region, will have “legislative powers over such matters as administrative organization and ancestral domain, which are not granted to local government units.”

However, the President will exercise general supervision, and the National Government will continue to exercise power over, among others, national defense, security, foreign relations, monetary policy, and customs and tariffs, according to a primer provided by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process.

Transition

Representative Raul del Mar (Cebu City, North) said he will thoroughly go over the provisions of the bill, as well as the corresponding arguments, before taking a position.

Representative Joseph Ace Durano (Cebu Province, Fifth District) said he will study how the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law reconciles the creation of this new political entity with the constitutional provisions on the creation of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm), among others.

If the basic law is passed and ratified in a plebiscite, the ARMM will be deemed abolished. A Bangsamoro Transition Authority appointed by President Benigno Aquino III will serve as the interim government, until the Bangsamoro officials are elected and can assume office.

Representative Rodrigo Abellanosa (Cebu City, South) said he will vote in favor of the Bangsamoro Basic Law if it will prove to be useful in promoting peace and unity in the country.

Abellanosa said, though, that he has many questions about the draft law.

Questions

“As previously ruled by the Supreme Court when it invalidated the 2008 memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain proposed by the previous administration, recognizing an entity ‘in preparation for independence’ violates the national integrity provisions. Hence, the next question is, ‘Does this constitute a preparation for independence of the Bangsamoro?” he said.

The congressman said he will suggest that the law “explicitly state that the Bangsamoro remains bound within the framework of the Constitution and explicitly recognizes national sovereignty.”

Both House Bill 4994 and Senate Bill 2408 provide that the National Government will retain its power over defense and external security, foreign policy, monetary policy, citizenship, postal services, immigration, some aspects of customs and tariff supervision, common market and global trade, and intellectual property rights.

The National and Bangsamoro Governments, according to the bills, will share some powers, including the power over social security, land registration, the penitentiary, auditing, civil service, justice, disaster risk reduction and management, and public order and safety.

The historic signing last March of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro capped negotiations that started in January 1997, facilitated beginning in 2001 by the Government of Malaysia.

By Elias O. Baquero, Isolde D. Amante and Princess Dawn H. Felicitas - SunStar

TUCP blames World Bank for 23,000 retrenchments

WE are daring to criticize the revered and mighty World Bank again.

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines-Nagkaisa (TUCP-Nagkaisa) has rebuked the World Bank (WB) during its shareholder consultation last Thursday “for excluding core labor standards in its project and policy loans intended for so-called development programs in the country amid the static unemployment and underemployment statistics.”

TUCP estimates that because of “the absence of these standards, around 23,000 workers are already being affected in two ongoing country projects.”

“The bank continues to ignore very important core labor safeguards and standards on wages, health and safe working conditions, terms of employment of workers employed in Bank- financed projects. The continued absence of these core labor standards means that the World Bank will not stand in the way of those denying Filipino workers their right to organize and unionize in infrastructure projects sponsored by the Bank. It means that the Bank will not stand in the way of those retrenching workers in Bank–financed privatizations of state enterprises. We insist that these benchmarks be integrated as soon as possible, otherwise the Bank will be a party to the race-to-the-bottom in terms of the already massive de facto casualization and contractualization of workers,” said Alan Tanjusay, TUCP-Nagkaisa spokesperson.

The bank had organized a round of consultation with various labor unions representatives, environmental advocates, sectoral leaders of peasants, indigenous peoples, women, fisherfolk and youth in the Astoria Plaza in Pasig City last Thursday in the course of its global review and update of its environmental and social policies.

Gerard Seno, executive director of the Associated Labor Unions-TUCP, said the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) have started asserting since 1997 for the incorporation of the core labor standards in the safeguard policies of the Bank.

Commendably the World Bank has taken a position against the use of child-labor and non-discrimination in the work force due to sex, religion and political beliefs but there are still huge and gaping holes in their current draft of the “Environmental and Social Standard: Labor and Working Conditions,” TUCP said.

The bank’s board is scheduled to consider a draft in 2015 that is supposed to be inputted with ideas gathered from the consultations.

“The draft labor standard prepared by the Bank does not have the standard requirement that has existed at the bank’s private sector lending arm the International Finance Corporation (IFC) since 2006 and those that have been adopted in recent years by many regional development banks,” Seno said.

TUCP-Nagkaisa Executive Director Luis Corral pointed out that there are more than 23,000 workers in the 119 electric cooperatives whose wages, working conditions and even security of tenure could be affected by World Bank grants and loans for these electric cooperatives.

Coral said, “We are concerned that the workers in these electric cooperatives are not being consulted through their existing unions. The fear of retrenchment or displacement is very real. We remind the Bank that because of the bank-sponsored privatization of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) thousands of workers were retrenched. The Bank must proceed with more responsibility and social consciousness.”

“The World Bank has to be reminded that it is the ordinary taxpayers’ money from all the member governments that finances these Bank projects. These are taxes paid by ordinary workers. We also remind the Bank that its aim is to eradicate poverty. It will not do so if even in its own projects, it will not stand for standards that will advance decent work,” Corral added.

We wholeheartedly endorse TUCP’s proposals to the World Bank. - Manila Times

Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) Ad Hoc committee hearing in Cotabato City

October 23, 2014 - Rep. Raymond Mendoza at Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) Ad Hoc committee hearing in Cotabato City with ARMM Gov. Hataman and various officials of congress and local government.

For other BBL committee schedule see link