Transport agony worsens workers’ income slump
THE chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor on Tuesday lamented the worsening transport agony workers go through daily, negating gains as they go back to work.
Sen. Joel Villanueva, panel chairman, rued it is bad enough that workers had to endure loss of income and leave benefits during the quarantine period, but to subject them to great misery on the road as the lockdowns eased on Monday (June 1, 2020) is unconscionable.
Sen. Nancy Binay weighed in on the issue and suggested that transportation officials should try commuting from their homes with the limited transport so they will better “appreciate the situation.”
Villanueva lamented that while “our economy has been the prime consideration in the decision to relax our quarantine restriction, but sadly, it appears we forgot about the mobility of our workers in our desire to jumpstart the recovery.”
“For industries to restart successfully, it relies on the labor of the people to spark the economic recovery,” he said,
as workers in Metro Manila industries struggled for a second day with the lack of public transportation—which is still banned except for limited rail seating—and had to work for several hours just to reach their job sites.
“Mass transportation plays a critical role in the successful restart of our economy. We hope our transport regulators are able to make adjustments in their plans in the coming days so that our workers won’t have to worry how to get to work,” added the lawmaker in a news statement issued on Tuesday morning.
Transportation issues hounded the first day of the general community quarantine in Metro Manila as the government deployed trucks to ferry those stranded in major roads.
Villanueva noted that workers cannot afford to miss work, or be late because they’ve already suffered so much since mid-march, when strict movement restrictions were imposed to curb the transmission ofc ovid -19. the enhanced community quarantine shut down most industries and businesses and for workers, that meant “no work, no pay.”
The senator urged the Duterte administration to increase its capacity on disease surveillance, which remains to be the only option to manage the spread of Covid-19 in the absence of a vaccine. With more people out, and workers having to fill out contact tracing forms in the workplaces, the government should handle this increase by expanding its capacity for contact tracing, he added.
At the same time, Villanueva supported the funding of the Department of Labor and Employment’s Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/displaced Workers (TUPAD) which will be used to increase the capacity of the government’s contact tracing program. According to the 10th Bayanihan Report to Congress which Malacañang submitted on Monday, the government retained 134 individuals in its contact tracing program, deployed in 61 hospitals, and regional and city epidemiology surveillance units.
Meanwhile, villa nu eva reminded the labor department to pro actively monitor the compliance of companies with prevailing occupational safety and health standards, saying that workplaces must always ensure the welfare of workers.