Labor party and urban poor groups demand massive funding for decent housing

PRESS RELEASE
29 October 2009

Carrying salvaged house wares to symbolize what remain of their lives after the onslaught of Ondoy and Pepeng, labor and urban poor groups led by labor partylist group Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) and the Alyansa ng Maralitang Pilipino (AMP) trooped to the historic Mendiola bridge this morning demanding massive funding for decent housing and to protest the government’s planned forced relocation of poor settlers living in danger zones.

PM chair Renato Magtubo, said without allocating enough funds for building decent houses and safe habitat for the poor, talks about rehabilitation and reconstruction are mere dead words and housing problems cannot be substantially addressed.

The groups are asking the government to declare a moratorium on debt payments to free the funds intended to it for massive rehabilitation and reconstruction program. Citing the latest debt statistics from the Freedom from Debt Coalition, foreign debt service for 2010 amounts to P253.459-B and domestic debt service to about P492.716-B. Government puts the rehabilitation and reconstruction costs to only about P50-B.

Resisting what he described as ‘anti-poor’ prejudice being peddled by the government against the poor, Magtubo turned the table against the failed housing programs of the past and present governments, saying this was the main cause why millions of poor Filipinos are forced to subsist in houses made of light materials and stay in places prone to natural disasters such as floods and man-made disasters such as fires.

Magtubo said further that workers both in the formal and informal sectors whose incomes could not even meet even half of the current cost of living surely do not have the options to live in a less dangerous way, more so for the unemployed.

“Thus, the poor have long been ‘in danger’ living in this kind of miserable conditions,” stressed Magtubo.

Hence, instead of blaming the poor for waiting their deaths in unsafe and inhabitable places, “the government should help them rise with dignity by addressing the housing problem and not by pulling them down further with anti-poor prejudice and threats of government-sponsored forced relocations,” added Magtubo.

The labor leader explained that any relocation plans and new housing program should now be premised on the right to housing of all Filipinos and environmental concerns. “This means that housing units should be built of strong materials but affordable, and placed in areas that are not only safe but also sustainable,” added Magtubo.

The Alyansa ng Maralitang Pilipino echoed the same position, saying that the usual ‘balik-probinsya’ and the hit and miss, unfunded relocation programs do not solve the problems of the urban poor.

The group cited the case of informal settlers from Manila who were relocated in Marilao and Sta. Maria Bulacan, as well as in Rizal suffering the same miserable conditions as well as devastations from natural calamities such as Ondoy and Pepeng.

Meanwhile, in opposition to the general view that it is the millions of poor who pollute and destroy nature, both PM and AMP point to the bigger roles played by industry owners, mining companies, and land developers in exploiting natural resources and destroying our natural habitat.

Manggagawa at maralitang biktima ng kalamidad nagprotesta sa Mendiola

Press Release
October 29, 2009

Dala ang mga sira-sirang damit at kasangkapan na sumisimbolo sa hagupit ng kalamidad, sinugod nang may-ilang daang biktima ng bagyong Ondoy, ang Mendiola para magprotesta laban sa anila’y mata-pobreng pagtrato sa kanila, palpak na programang pabahay ng pamahalaan, at banta ng pwersahang relokasyon.

Pinangunahan ang kilos-protesta ng mga miyembro ng Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) at Alyansa ng Maralitang Pilipino (AMP) mula pa sa mga lalawigan ng Rizal, Laguna, at Bulacan. Nauna rito ay nagbanta ang pamahalaan na pwersahang aalisin ang mga maralita sa mga itinuturing na danger zone dahil ang mga iligal na istruktura umano ang bumabara sa mga natural na daluyan ng tubig na siyang dahilan ng malawak na pinsala ng mga pagbaha.

Nanawagan ang mga manggagawa at maralita sa pamahalaan na walang pwersahang demolisyon at relokasyon na dapat isagawa hangga’t walang malinaw at makataong paninirahan na maibibigay sa kanila ang pamahalaan.

Ayon kay Renato Magtubo, tagapangulo ng PM, sa halip na idagan ang mata-pobreng panunumbat sa mga maralita na silang mas malagim na biktima ng kalamidad, mas dapat ibangon di lamang ang nasalanta nilang kabuhayan kundi ang kanilang dignidad sa pamamagitan ng tamang pagtrato sa kanila at pagharap sa totoong problemang kanilang kinasadlakan.

Ang totoo umano, ani Magtubo, ay mas malaki ang kontribusyon ng mga industriya, mining companies, at land developers at kapabayaan ng kasalukuyan at dati pang mga pamahalaan sa pagkasira ng kalikasan.

Idinagdag pa ni Magtubo na lagi-laging nahahantong sa “danger zones” ang mga maralita dahil mismo sa klase ng lugar na kanilang kinalalagyan at klase ng materyales na gamit sa kanilang mga bahay. Kahit saan umanong lugar, walang laban sa hangin at baha, maging sa sunog ang mga barung-barong na gawa sa mga light materials. Ito aniya ang paliwanag kung bakit di itinuturing na nasa danger zone ang mga mansyon, malalaking gusali, at palasyo gaya ng Malacanang sa tabi ng mga ilog dahil ligtas ang mga ito kumpara sa mga barung-barong sa tabi ng mga estero.

Ayon naman kay Romeo Cabugnason, pinuno ng AMP, ang ultimong solusyon dito ay seryosong programa para sa desente at ligtas na pabahay, hindi ang paulit-ulit na ‘balik-probinsya’ program, o relokasyon sa mga undeveloped at inhabitable relocation areas gaya ng naging kaso sa Bulacan.

Naniniwala ang PM at AMP na walang mangyayari sa programang rehabilitasyon at rekonstruksyon hangga’t walang ilalaang malaking pondo para dito ang pamahalaan, laluna’t halos 30% ng pondo ng gubyerno ay napupunta lang sa pambayad ng utang.

Kaya nanawagan ang mga ito na itigil muna ang pagbabayad utang at para matugunan ang lahat ng kinakailangang pondo para sa rehabilitasyon at maisakatuparan ang isang bagong programa na tutugon sa malawak na problema ng kawalan ng desente, ligtas na pabahay at makataong pamumuhay.

Lakeside residents of Binan seek LGU, National Government aid amid miserable state

PRESS RELEASE
Alyansa ng Maralitang Pilipino
Partido ng Manggagawa
26 October 2009

Residents residing at Barangays Malaban and San Antonio in Biñan Laguna will hold a rally this morning at this town’s Municipal Hall to seek aid from both the local and national government. The two barangays are just part of several barangays that are still under water since the onslaught of typhoon Ondoy that drove lake waters of Laguna De Bay to rise.

The local of Alyansa ng Maralitang Pilipino (AMP) in Biñan said food and health conditions in the area are very bad because of lack of safe drinking water and lack of other basic supplies, among others. They also fear of forced relocation being planned by the national government without any assurance that such a plan would lead them to a better habitat.

AMP leaders Mercy Manzo and Elizabeth Mendoza describe their situation in the area as “helpless and miserable” as relief goods are still lacking in most parts of the area and many people have no more means of earning an income unlike before. Many people especially children are also getting sick because of lack of sanitation and safe drinking water.

“We don’t know how we can survive this kind of situation,” Manzo said, adding that without continuing relief operations and alternative places to live, the people around the lake face humanitarian crisis.

The group is asking the local government to formulate a short and long-term solution to this problem, including alternative places where affected residents can live safely. They are also asking for livelihood assistance to recover their means of livelihood that were devastated by Ondoy.

The AMP is also calling on the national government to give due attention to the poor people of Biñan and Laguna rather than blaming them for making themselves the victims of their own desperate situation. The government, specifically the Laguna Lake Development Authority had been blaming the poor settlers for clogging the natural waterways that aggravates flooding.

“There are bigger players to blame such as industry owners, mining companies and land developers who destroy our natural habitats. Why point all your fingers to us?,” complained the AMP leaders.

After the protest action in Laguna, the AMP and the Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) will bring their issues to Malacanang in another rally to be held in Mendiola on Thursday, October 29.

The AMP and PM will demand a moratorium on debt payments and massive government funds saved from debt service be allotted for rehabilitation and reconstruction program. “Rehabilitation and reconstruction are dead words without the funds,” stressed the group.

The groups will also press for a new housing program that decisively addresses housing problems -- the main reason why poor settlers are forced to live and face their deaths in “danger zones”. Another demand is for a new, centralized and coordinated land use policy to prevent land developers and miners convert and destroy lands so that the poor can be accorded habitable and sustainable places to live.

PM challenges POEA, DOLE to act swiftly vs recruiter of teachers

Press Release
October 26, 2009

After the submission by more than 60 teachers of their statements detailing their miserable experiences with their recruiter, the party-list Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) is challenging the POEA and the DOLE to act swiftly on their case.

A representative of the migrant teachers who are based in the state of Louisiana who has been working closely with PM has brought home a portfolio containing the complaints. The declarations were submitted to Labor Secretary Marianito Roque. The same documents are part of the evidences in the cases filed by the American Federation of Teachers in behalf of the Filipino teachers against the recruiting agency.

The subjects of the teachers’ complaints are the US-based Universal Placement International (UPI) and its local partner PARS International Placement Agency. Both companies are owned by Lourdes “Lulu” Navarro who is based in the US, and her brother Emilio “Mel” Villarba is the one who runs the local operations.

“POEA has knowledge of the exploitative practices of PARS and UPI long before. Feedbacks from the victims were already coming out since last year; several individual cases were filed against PARS by teachers who paid but where never able to fly to the US earlier this year; further we have informed our embassy in the US about the hundreds of teachers that are being recruited in a manner that borders on human trafficking. So we are appalled that no swift action was undertaken to look seriously into this issue,” asserted Renato Magtubo, PM Chairperson.

Magtubo is reacting to news reports recently where POEA chief Jennifer Manalili said that they will look into the complaints against UPI, which is based in California.

“A central mandate of the POEA is the protection of migrant workers. We challenge the POEA to walk their talk and bring an immediate stop to these exploitative practices of recruitment agencies particularly of those involved in this case. It is not only the US-based UPI who is the perpetrator of this injustice but also PARS which acts as its front here in the Philippines,” Magtubo further said.

PM through its Liaison Officer in the US also reports that more teachers are now coming out to join the complaints filed against PARS and UPI. Some of them are not even employed until now despite paying the recruiters an average of $15,000 each.

"Again, we reiterate our call for the immediate delisting of PARS International Placement Agency. This recruiter is a scourge to the workers and should be stopped from victimizing more Filipinos. PM further demands that POEA institute mechanisms for transparency such as the online publication of the track record of placement agencies, their violations, complaints filed against them and actual feedback from workers placed,” added Magtubo.

In the POEA registry that is available online, PARS is located at Suite 407 J&F Divino Arcade, 961 Aurora Blvd. Cubao, QC.

Message of Solidarity with the Pinoy Teachers of Louisiana

The Partido ng Manggagawa salutes the brave Filipino migrant teachers in Louisiana. In the name of the working class in the Philippines, we support you in your fight for justice against the illegal and oppressive policies of the recruiter Lulu Navarro. We pledge to help your cause and struggle in any way we can.

You have broken the stereotype of Filipino teachers as meek and submissive slaves who will endure inhuman treatment with hardly a peep. Instead you have stood for what you believe is right despite all the odds and against threats of persecution by Navarro and her minions.

You have proven once again that in unity there is strength and in action lies the possibility of victory. The support you have garnered from the Filipino-American community, the American Federation of Teachers and even the coverage that has been given your issue by the US mass media is testimony to you determination in struggle over the course of almost a year.

With the light at the end of the tunnel ever clearer now as far as achieving your goals of seeking justice, we encourage you to broaden the scope of your fight and raise it to the next level. We ask that add to your agenda the reform of overseas employment policy in order to stop the abuse of Filipino migrant workers. If professionals like teachers can become slave labor in a country like the US, no wonder OFW’s by the thousands suffer from abuse, discrimination and indignity across the globe.

Among the most important of these reforms would be to end the deregulation of the labor export industry and for Congress to amend the Migrant Workers Act in this regard. Illegal recruitment and OFW abuse thrives since government insists on promoting overseas employment while allowing private recruitment agencies to do the actual placement of workers.

It is also necessary that Philippine embassies and consulates make the protection of migrant workers its principal work. The government must forge labor agreements with receiving countries that will guarantee enforcement of labor standards, social protections and workers rights.

You are in the best position to advocate such reforms. In order for such a bigger fight to succeed, you must forge links with other Filipino migrant workers, expand further your alliances with the American labor movement and the Filipino-American community, even as you build ties with the working class movement in the Philippines.

Cebu export zone workers picket DOLE, assail collusion with employers

Press Release
October 6, 2009

Workers of a garments factory in the Mactan Economic Zone (MEZ) today picketed the DOLE office in Cebu a day after a summary decision by labor officials on a controversial certification election. Around 100 workers from Alta Mode Inc. slammed the DOLE for colluding with employers in derailing workers rights to organize.

“Hardly one week has passed since the investigation by the International Labor Organization (ILO) into government’s enforcement of Convention 87 on the freedom of association but the DOLE is back to business as usual in conspiring with employers in hindering unionization. The med-arbiter’s summary decision without benefit of a hearing to canvass 27 disputed votes in the certification election completes management’s scheme to deny our labor rights,” stated Renante Pelino, president of the Alta Mode Workers Union (AMWU).

The protesting workers brought placards assailing “DOLE-capitalist conspiracy vs. workers rights.” Some placards also appealed to the multinational garments firm A&F which owns the brands Abercrombie and Fitch, and Hollister to respect labor rights in its supplier companies, among them Alta Mode Inc. Since the start of the year up to the Alta Mode shutdown last September 11, the workers were producing orders for A&F products.

AMWU representatives and its lawyer walked out of the canvassing yesterday after the med-arbiter Atty. Theresa Casino and the DOLE election officer Eliza Mojana dismissed the workers’ motion for reconsideration and pushed through with the counting of the 27 segregated ballots. AMWU criticized the decision to count the 27 segregated votes without hearing the side of the workers on why the disputed ballots should not be counted. “These 27 ballots were cast by supervisors and others that should be excluded since we filed a petition for elections with only regular rank-and-file workers as the bargaining unit. We do not oppose unionization, and in fact we will support it, by supervisors but by law they should organize unions separate from the rank-and-file,” Pelino explained.

In the hearing conducted by ILO more than a week ago, Renato Magtubo, chairperson of the Partido ng Manggagawa (PM), presented Alta Mode as “a graphic case of the violation of Convention 87” and proof of the “no union policy” in the export zones. According to Magtubo, AMWU’s experience reflects why not a single union has survived and gained status as a bargaining agent in the 30 years of the MEZ.

AMWU and PM, which is supporting the workers, vowed that the picket today is just the start of a series of protests against employer interference and DOLE’s collusion in workers freedom to organize. The workers chanted “Babalik kami, mas marami” as the picketed ended.

Militant urban poor group opposes forced relocation

Press Release
October 5, 2009
Alyansa ng Maralitang Pilipino


The urtban poor group Alyansa ng Maralitang Pilipino opposes the governments’ forcible relocation that will affect thousand of families living in major water ways and Laguna Lake.

“The governments’ plan of forcible relocation will be a man made disaster that comes on top of the natural catastrophe brought about by tropical storm Ondoy. We hold on our basic right to decent shelter, thus we are calling on the government to create an inter-agency committee with representation from the affected families to ensure decent relocation as declared in the Urban Development and Housing Act,” Romy Cabugnason, AMP, Chairman, stated.

The government proposes to relocate families in Calauan, Laguna and San Miguel, Bulacan. Calauan, Laguna is also a resettlement area to families from PNR, and was already reported for lack of basic services such as water, power, health, education and means of livelihood.

Cabugnason added that, “We were never anti-development as this elite government wish to project, only that we know that we have the right for a decent shelter instead of forcible relocation in some area without employment and/or basic services. Decent shelter is a basic policy of the government that Secretary of Defense Gilbert Teodoro Jr., should have known as he aspires to be head the state.”

“The Filipino unity is inspiring we know that we are not facing the tragedy of tropical storm Ondoy alone. But then, since we are from the danger zone the government should not put us in harm by putting us in the death zone,” Cabugnason ended.

Labor group asks recruitment agency of Pinoy teachers to be delisted

Press Release
October 4, 2009

The party-list group Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) called on the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) to delist the local placement agency of the Filipino migrant teachers in Louisiana that have filed complaints of illegal recruitment, illegal fees and various labor violations against a US-based manpower firm. PM also welcomed the support of the American Federation of Teachers as it criticized the government’s slow action.

“PARS International Placement Agency is the local partner of the US-based Universal Placement International Inc. which is the subject of the teachers’ complaints. PARS International Placement Agency is listed in the POEA registry of recruitment agencies as good standing and with a license to operate from October 17, 2006 to October 17, 2010. We ask the POEA to motu proprio start the process of delisting PARS International Placement Agency if not it will have one more year to victimize OFW’s,” stated Renato Magtubo, PM chairperson.

In the POEA registry that is available online, http://www.poea.gov.ph/cgi-bin/agList.asp?mode=all, PARS International Placement Agency has an address at Suite 407 J&F Divino Arcade, 961 Aurora Blvd. Cubao, QC with a certain Emilio Villarba as official representative. The Filipino migrant teachers allege though that PARS International Placement and Universal Placement Agency are both owned by Lourdes “Lulu” Navarro, the respondent of the case at the Louisiana Workplace Commission.

PM is pushing for reforms in the overseas employment policy in order to stop the abuse of Filipino migrant workers. It challenged the presidentiables to include such policy reforms in their platform. “If professionals like teachers can become slave labor in a country like the US, no wonder OFW’s by the thousands suffer from abuse, discrimination and indignity across the globe,” Magtubo insisted.

The party-list group is demanding an end to the deregulation of the labor export industry and asking Congress to amend the Migrant Workers Act in this regard. “Government is as much to blame for illegal recruitment and OFW abuse since it keeps on promoting overseas employment while allowing private recruitment agencies to do the actual placement of workers. The pusher should be a worse criminal than the user, as in the case of drugs,” Magtubo argued.

The group is also pushing that Philippine embassies and consulates make the protection of migrant workers its principal work. Magtubo said that “The government must forge labor agreements with receiving countries that will guarantee enforcement of labor standards, social protections and workers rights.”