Jobs creation, not Charter change

Yesterday’s anti-Charter change rally in Makati, preceded by a string of daily rallies all over the metropolis and many parts of the country, hammers home a relevant point: It is not Charter change that we need, but jobs to keep our people from being drowned by the global crisis.

The Philippines has started to enter into what is effectively a recession since last year, asserted research group Ibon Foundation, if we consider not just the steeply dropping growth rates, but also rising joblessness and poverty in the country.

GDP growth rates have already drastically fallen from 7.1 percent in 2007 to 3.8 percent in 2008 and 0.4 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

If economic growth has not picked up significantly in the last three quarters of the year, then the country will be facing its worst decline in growth since at least the 1984-1985 period, which preceded the upsurge of protest and the People Power uprising that overthrew the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, warned Ibon.

So-called economic growth, based on standard macroeconomic indicators, is also increasingly being disconnected from the lives and welfare of the majority of Filipinos, as indicators of welfare and well-being are hardly monitored. For instance, gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2007, the fastest in 30 years, did not significantly reduce high unemployment or substantially improve incomes.

GDP growth has also supposedly also been steadily rising since the 1.8-percent growth recorded in 2001, yet joblessness and poverty since then have worsened. Joblessness in the last eight years has remained at record high with 10.7 million Filipinos jobless and underemployed, and a real unemployment rate of over 11 percent in 2008.

Even measured by low official poverty threshold, there were 4.7 million poor families or 27.6 million poor Filipinos in 2006. This is an increase of 700,000 families and 3.8 million Filipinos from 2003.

Ibon’s latest quarterly survey in April 2009 had seven out of 10 Filipinos rating themselves as poor, while the Social Weather Stations had reported that from January to March, unemployment rose to 34.2 million, with 11 million additional unemployed from the previous quarter.

Gross economic distortion is shown by positive growth rates accompanied by high and rising unemployment, falling incomes, increasing poverty and deteriorating welfare. Filipinos will expectedly suffer from a most likely scenario of severe economic contraction, and this underscores the need for fundamentally sound socioeconomic and political reforms to make the domestic economy vibrant, while transferring resources to the poor.

The need to create jobs and resolve existing social complications was underscored by parliamentarians from 28 Asia-Pacific countries who met in Pasig last May 20 to 23 to form the Network for Social Democracy in Asia. Their communiqué gives us pointers on how to effect economic reforms and create jobs and promote social equality, things that legislators should have ensured through law.

The social democrats called for investments in social services like health, education and housing; relief through unemployment support, skills upgrading and retraining and other benefits to displaced workers; universality of social protection coverage; repudiation of “odious” debts to guarantee social financing; and investments in green technologies to combat climate change. These are universal calls of civil society groups anywhere in the world.

Their network being an international formation, the delegates also underscored the need to establish social dimensions in regional integration processes, a factor important in dealing with migration and even swine and avian flu that now bedevil Asia-Pacific.

The International Labor Organization predicts that unemployment in Asia will rise between 9 million and 26 million this year because of global recession, and the Philippines practically concedes to a recession as shown by the rapid rise in unemployment in the first quarter of this year.

It is not Charter change that we need, but emergency relief for workers affected by the onslaught of the global financial crisis and the chronic economic crisis in the country, said Anakpawis Rep. Joel Maglunsod.

He reiterated the need to grant emergency assistance to displaced workers and other poor sectors in the country. Last January, then lone Anakpawis Representative Rafael Mariano filed House Resolution 970 urging the national government to implement emergency relief measures to assist all workers displaced due to the worsening global and domestic economic crisis.

The resolution seeks to grant emergency financial assistance for displaced workers through the Presidential Social Fund, Social Security System and Department of Labor and Employment. It also seeks the implementation on the moratorium on withholding taxes, tax refund, and a no lay-off / no retrenchment policy.

It also sought a halt the rationalization plan affecting government employees, and the imposition of price controls on basic commodities.

Maglunsod will himself a bill to grant a P10,000 emergency financial assistance package for six months, to be sourced from the billions of revenues collected from royalties on indigenous energy sources, value added tax and the Presidential Social Fund.

The Arroyo government’s failure to provide for these social needs, while ensuring an opportunity for the much-hated charter change directed by Malacañang is the main reason why many Filipinos are now trooping to the streets again. –Nora O. Gamolo, Manila Times

ngamolo@manilatimes.net/ngamolo@gmail.com