An alliance of workers’ groups in Negros Occidental is urging President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to focus on addressing the opposition to sugar import liberalization, the call for wage increases, and the International Criminal Court investigation into extra judicial killings in the country in his second State of the Nation Address on Monday, July 24.
General Alliance of Workers Association secretary general Wennie Sancho said that these three concerns should be given preference by Marcos in his SONA for him to be remembered as a “dispenser of justice and defender of the poor and the oppressed.”
A substantial wage increase for all workers in the private sector in Western Visayas should be at least P500 a day to prevent the continuing erosion of their purchasing power and for them to cope with the high cost of living, Sancho said.
“It is included in the Labor and Employment Plan (LEP) of DOLE that a wage increase is necessary and the workers should have quality jobs and better salaries for them to be more productive,” Sancho said.
He also said that the sugar industry will be destroyed if sugar import liberalization continues to benefit traders and smugglers at the expense of the workers and consumers.
GAWA also urged the president to allow the ICC to continue its probe on the war on drugs of the previous administration.
Marcos should initiate an “open door” policy to allow the investigators of the ICC to come into the country, in order to give justice to the victims of the extra-judicial killings, Sancho said.
“If PBBM would like to project that he is not like his father, or at least not a dictator like his father, he must exercise prudence in making a just decision on the issue of EJK being investigated by the ICC,” he added.
Sancho also said that addressing these issues will help to gradually eliminate the public perception of the abuses of power during martial law and will restore trust and confidence in the Office of the President.*