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| Photo from Philstar.com |
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BPO workers association today called for stronger labor enforcement and inspection
in response to the deadly fire at the NCCC
Mall in Davao City that claimed the 37 employees of the call center SSI. The group
also expressed condolences to the families of the victims.
“Accidents are not acts of divine providence that can be
dismissed as unavoidable. Instead, accidents are the result of unsafe acts and therefore preventable by strict
enforcement of occupational safety and health and labor standards,” Rossie Hong, chairperson of I-Shield (Secured
and Healthy Initiative Enabling Labor Defense). I-Shield
was formerly named the Inter-Call Center Association of Workers (ICCAW).
Hong added that “Heads must roll and justice must be served
for the needless deaths and injuries to our fellow BPO workers. While employers
were scrimping on protection for workers and DOLE was sleeping on its job of
enforcement, workers are dying in the workplace.”
I-Shield
lambasted employers for cutting corners in occupational safety in order to
raise profits and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) for lax
implementation of labor and safety standards. The deaths
of SSI workers comes on top of the loss of lives in the industrial fires
at Kentex in Valenzuela and HTI in Cavite ecozone.
I-Shield called on the DOLE activate the trade unionists who
were recently trained to be labor inspectors. The deputization of unionists as
inspectors was a demand of labor groups in the wake of the Kentex and HTI
tragedies as a means to augment the number of inspectors and involve labor
groups in enforcement. However months after being trained and deputized, none
of the unionists have been given mission orders by the DOLE for actual
inspections.
“Is the DOLE waiting for another industrial tragedy before it
mobilizes trained unionists for labor inspections?,” Hong insisted.
I-Shield also appealed to the DOLE to immediately hold new
batches of trainings for more unionists from different labor groups who are waiting
in line to be deputized as inspectors.
ICCAW was formed in 2012 but changed its name to I-Shield
this year. I-Shield is the accredited labor representative in the Region VII
ICT industry tripartite council. Its website is https://bposhield.com.
I-Shield
December 27, 2017
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