By DEE AYROSO
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81 COVID-19 cases among health workers, total at 5,326 as of August 5
The Department of Health (DOH) Situationer Report with data as of August 5 recorded 81 new confirmed COVID-19 cases among health care workers, bringing the total cases to 5,326 or 4.6% of the cases in the country. An additional 42 active cases were recorded, bringing the total of active cases to 472. There were 39 […]
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Amid rise in COVID-19 cases in government sector, group calls for free testing, treatment
“We condemn the continuing lack of protective equipment, assurance of free testing and treatment among all public sector employees.”
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – The largest federation government employees unions is pushing for free mass testing and treatment for government employees infected by COVID-19.
According to the Civil Service Commission’s (CSC) report, at least 153 government agencies nationwide are halting their operations amid the increasing cases of COVID-19 among employees. Of this number, 108 are in Metro Manila.
There are already 7,472 employees who tested positive for the virus and about 10,000 more are suspected of being infected.
In their online press conference on Aug. 6, Alan Balaba, national president of the Social Welfare Employees’ Association of the Philippines, said that most of those who are infected were involved in the distribution of social amelioration program.
Balaba lamented that there are no clear protocols on how the DSWD management will assist the infected employees.
“Kanya-kanyang diskarte,” (They’re on their own) he said, as testing and treatment are shouldered by the employees. Balaba said government must provide treatment for all infected employees.
The union, he said, also helps employees who need to undergo testing or isolation. They also distributed hygiene kits and other supplements.
The Confederation for Unity, Recognition, and Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE) said that the increasing COVID-19 cases among their rank is detrimental to the delivery of public service especially in this pressing time.
COURAGE National President Santiago Dasmariñas, Jr. said that many of the cases are in agencies that have a vital role in the COVID-19 response, particularly the DSWD and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).
He said that there are already 11 confirmed cases in the DSWD National Office and 18 other cases in DSWD-NCR.
“We are fearing that these numbers are actually growing as we speak especially in the regional offices. Social workers and MMDA laborers are the most at risk among our ranks to contract COVID-19,” Dasmariñas said.
“We condemn the continuing lack of protective equipment, assurance of free testing and treatment among all public sector employees. The frontliners are already bleeding, inaction and ineptitude will cost us dearly as a nation” Santiago added.
Threat of losing jobs
Balaba added that the employees are not only worried of contracting the virus but also of the possibility of losing their jobs amid the pandemic.
Balaba is referring to the Department of Budget and Management National Budget Circular 580 (DBM-NBC 580) or the Adoption of Economy Measures in Government Due to the Emergency Health Situation issued last April.
The circular was brought about by RA 11469 or the Bayanihan Act of 2020 which gave President Duterte the emergency powers to realign and raise funds for the government’s COVID-19 response.
Roxanne Fernandez, spokesperson of the Kawaning Kontraktwal Laban sa Kontraktwalisyon (KALAKON), said workers’ jobs, needs and benefits, especially that of the job orders and contractual workers, are usually the first to be sacrificed in cost-cutting measures like this.
Fernandez said that circular “states that to effect the 10% discontinuance, economy measures shall be implemented which includes primarily the discontinuance of hiring of job orders, except those considered as frontliners during this state of public health emergency.”
She said the pandemic and the DBM Circular is a big blow to the job orders and contractual employees.
Meanwhile, Dasmariñas reiterated COURAGE’s demands since March 2020: alternative and safer working arrangements such as work-from-home schemes, and free transportation services for the skeletal workforce in agencies.
Balaba said that many of the government employees also suffer from the lack of public transportation especially now that Mega Manila is reverted back to modified enhanced community quarantine. He said that while there are shuttles, these are not enough to accommodate all the workers.
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Manila court denies mother’s plea to be with newborn
“The decision to take away a newborn child from her mother is a callous, inhumane act against a person who fears for her life and of her child despite the concerning fact that Reina Mae doesn’t deserve even a single day in jail.”
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – The Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 20 once again denied the plea of political prisoner Reina Mae Nasino to be with her daughter for a longer period of time.
The order, which was signed by Presiding Judge Marivic T. Balisi-Umali, was released on July 30. Earlier, the court already denied the plea of Nasino to let her stay with her newborn in jail.
Nasino filed a motion for reconsideration asking again the court to allow her and her baby to stay at the hospital or at the prison nursery of the Female Dormitory of the Manila City Jail until her baby is one year old.
In a statement, Fides Lim, spokesperson of Kapatid, the support group for families and friends of political prisoners, said “the decision to take away a newborn child from her mother is a callous, inhumane act against a person who fears for her life and of her child despite the concerning fact that Reina Mae doesn’t deserve even a single day in jail.”
Umali based her decision on the letter-comment of the officer-in-charge of the Manila City Jail Female Dormitory which states that the dormitory is over 300-percent congested and not a healthy place for a baby to stay.
The OIC also said that Nasino is already feeding her baby formula milk. Lim said however that this should not be used as justification to sever the bonds between a mother and infant.
Lim said the presence of a mother to provide full care for her newborn is important. “Even the animal kingdom is flush with cases of how moms stay with their young and teach them how and what to eat to stay alive,” Lim said.
The court’s decision is heartbreaking, said Lim, especially that Nasino is a first-time mother.
“Forcible separation from her child is the worst thing that can happen to a mother who is also a victim of planted firearms as a political prisoner. She should not be made to pay this price. The right to take care of your child is a most fundamental one, but a court can strip it from a political prisoner so callously,” said Lim.
Because of the lower court’s denial of Nasino’s motion, Lim said this steps up the pressure on the Supreme Court to act with exigency on the petition they filed on April 8.
The petition is urging the SC to release 22 political prisoners, including Nasino, as well as ordinary prisoners who are most at risk from the pandemic.
Nasino was arrested together with two other activists on Nov. 5 last year when the police raided their office Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-Manila in Tondo, Manila.
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Ex-VP Binay, Saguisag, other lawyers ask high court to junk ‘terror law’
“The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 fails miserably to protect and preserve the guarantees of human rights and civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution and therefore must be struck down.”
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Former Vice President Jejomar Binay, former Sen. Rene Saguisag and other members of Concerned Lawyers for Civil Liberties (CLCL) filed today, Aug. 6, another petition seeking to nullify the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020.
Saguisag and Binay, both human rights lawyers during the Marcos dictatorship, were joined by University of the Philippines College of Law Dean Pacifico Agabin, National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers President Edre Olalia, law deans Anna Maria Abad and JV Bautista, law professor Rose-Liza Eisma-Osorio and private practitioner Emmanuel Jabla.
The group is asking the high court to declare the law as null and void, adding that its provisions infringe the right to due process and violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
This is the 25th petition filed against the ATA or Republic Act 11479.
In a statement, Saguisag, who was detained during Martial Law, said, “It seems that what we fought for in 1972, is again back. The total disrespect for human life, dignity, human rights. And that was how we started. In some ways, it [Anti-Terrrorism Council] may be worse.”
Void for vagueness
The petitioners argued that the law is void due its vagueness and overbreadth.
For one, the petitioners said that the definition of a “designated person” under Section 3 of the law, the definition of “terrorism” under Section 4 and other penalized acts under Sections 5 to 12 “are vague and overbroad, and must be struck down as unconstitutional.”
They argued that an act may be vague “when it lacks comprehensible standards that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ in its application.”
“The overbreadth doctrine, on the other hand, decrees that a governmental purpose may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms.”
The petition cites the United Nations Security Council Resolutions calling on states to “ensure that counter-terrorism measures comply with international human rights law, refugee law and humanitarian law.”
In the international concept of a lawful prescription of a crime, the petitioners stated the following elements:
– The law must be adequately accessible so that individuals have an adequate indication of how the law limits their rights; and
– The law must be formulated with sufficient precision so that individuals can regulate their conduct.
With this, the petitioners said that these “elements of a lawful definition of what constitutes a ‘crime’ jibes with the tests of ‘vagueness’ laid down by the SC.”
Agabin, meanwhile, warned that the ATA “leaves law enforcers unbridled discretion in carrying out its provisions and becomes an arbitrary flexing of the Government muscle.”
The petitioners also questioned the authority of the Anti-Terrorism Council to take into custody a person based only on mere suspicion. They said that this would “put in constant danger the rights of persons under the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.” “It would violate not just the rights to life and liberty, but is also inimical to free speech,” they said.
They added that Section 29 of the law removes the judiciary of its constitutionally-protected prerogative over the power to arrest.
“Only courts have the power to issue warrants of arrest; therefore, it should not devolve upon officials of the executive, such as the ATC, who is composed of alter-egos of the President,” the petitioners said in a statement.
On violating the equal protection clause of the Constitution
The petitioners assert that the law would deny due process to those who are merely suspected of being a terrorist.
They said “the ATA further does not show any indication of the existence of any public emergency that would require the need for a special treatment of suspected terrorists. The ATA unnecessarily carves out the crime of terrorism as outside the realm of the criminal justice system, which is violative of the equal protection clause.”
The petitioners said that terrorism is a criminal act that destroys society. This must be stopped, they said, “to preserve the country’s security and democratic way of life.”
“But for a democratic country, like the Philippines, with the Constitution that we have, at the core of the right of the State to employ counter terrorism measures for self-preservation must be found the bedrock of human rights and civil liberties,” the petition read.
“The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 fails miserably to protect and preserve the guarantees of human rights and civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution and therefore must be struck down,” it added.
The petitioners are represented by legal counsels Agabin, Lacanilao, and Bayan Muna President Neri J. Colmenares.
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Editorial cartoon: Sitting on a mountain of problems
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Duterte gov’t to blame for worst economic collapse in PH history
The Duterte administration is to blame for the worst economic
collapse in the country’s recorded history. Growth rate falling to -16.5% in the second
quarter from 5.4% in the same period last year is an unprecedented 21.9
percentage point drop.
All the countries in Southeast Asia recorded their first cases of
COVID-19 within weeks of each other around the end of January. Six months
later, the Duterte government’s incompetent response has made us not just the sickest country but also
the weakest economy in the region.
The country’s second quarter performance
is the worst of the major economies of ASEAN: Singapore (-12.6%), Indonesia
(-5.3%), Vietnam (0.4%). Thailand and Malaysia haven’t released their official
estimates yet but these are projected to be around -10% to -13% by analysts.
The pandemic’s impact is much worse than it should be because of
the Duterte administration’s slow, poor and inadequate pandemic response. The
economy will falter as the virus continues to spread. This is aggravated by the Philippines
having the smallest COVID-19 response in the region to
date, as monitored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The indifferent response of the
economic managers to the recently released data showing the deepest recession
in the country’s history is going to make things worse. The government refuses to give any more financial assistance to
poor households. Instead they keep on harping about creditworthiness and their
ever more irrelevant Build, Build, Build infrastructure offensive. The economic
managers repeated today that they have a recovery plan but have yet to share
this publicly.
As it is, the economic managers are
only willing to support a Php140 billion Bayanihan 2 package which is
barely 0.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Knowing how stingy this amount
is, they even deceitfully bloat this by claiming Php40 billion in corporate tax
breaks under the proposed Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) 2
aka Corporate
Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises
(CREATE) Act as a stimulus measure.
Tens of millions of poor Filipinos are suffering and will keep on
suffering from the administration’s criminal neglect. IBON estimates 14 million
unemployed Filipinos in April 2020, including discouraged workers who did not
bother looking for work. Adding the underemployed or those with jobs but not at
work could bring the number of Filipinos that are jobless and with lower
incomes to as much as 27 million.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) already recently
reported 554,966 overseas Filipino workers seeking
assistance. This will increase as the global recession unfolds further. The
DOLE also continues to report closures and retrenchments even after the easing
of lockdowns in June over two months ago. As it is, over three million workers
in 107,152 companies have already been affected by flexible
work arrangements, possibly lower pay and closures.
At the rate we’re going and with such a tepid government response, it may take the economy two years or more to even just get back to where it was before the pandemic. That was not even a good place to begin with.
The way out from recession is straightforward: contain the virus with rational testing, tracing and isolation of cases instead of desperate lockdowns; support health frontliners and increase hospital capacity; give financial assistance to improve household welfare and boost aggregate demand; and support Filipino MSMEs with cheap credit and enterprise support. IBON initially estimates a Php1.5 trillion recovery and reform package worth 7.7% of GDP is needed.
Political prisoner’s motion for reconsideration to stay with baby denied
In a decision dated July 30, 2020, Presiding Judge Marivic T. Balisi-Umali of Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 20 denied political prisoner Reina Mae Nasino’s motion for reconsideration of the said court’s order dated July 20, 2020 that denied her request to stay in a hospital or the jail nursery with her baby until her […]
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