PinoyAbrod.net

In a protest in Mendiola today, indigenous peoples groups led by Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KATRIBU) called Pres. Duterte “anti-indigenous peoples” and called for his ouster.

Indigenous leaders, educators, and advocates commemorated the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples with decentralized protests in Manila, Nueva Vizcaya, Baguio City, Pampanga, Iloilo, Surigao del Sur, Davao City, and Misamis Oriental.

The protesters expressed their demand to end attacks against indigenous peoples and communities through the ouster of the “US-Duterte regime”, saying that the Duterte administration “brought death and destruction, widespread human rights violations, loss of land and livelihood, poverty, and displacement of communities and people”.

“He [Duterte] even boasted about his search for investors for our lands to ensure funding for the destructive projects that we have long opposed,” KATRIBU secretary general Piya Malayao said.

She added that projects such as Kaliwa-Laiban Dam in Rizal and Quezon; Chico River Dam in Kalinga and Cagayan; Capas-Botolan Road and New Clark City projects in Zambales Mountain Range will widely dispalce IP communities, intensify land grabbing, and further increase Philippine foreign debt.

In 2016, KATRIBU submitted the Indigenous Peoples Agenda to Malacañang in hopes that Duterte would follow through with substantial reforms for national minorities. Groups pointed out that instead of consultations with indigenous communities, the president implemented the government’s so-called counterinsurgency program Oplan Kapayapaan, as well as policies of privatization, deregulation, and liberalization that led to human rights violations and overstepping of indigenous peoples’ rights to ancestral domain and self-determination.

The groups also reported that under Duterte’s martial law in Mindanao and Oplan Kapayaan, there have been 47 IP victims of extra-judicial killings, 24 incidents bombings, and intensified military offensives leading to forcible displacement of estimated number of 27,000 IPs in the country’s three major islands. There are also 384 recorded incidents of attacks on IP communities, leading to forcible closure of 72 schools.

Protesters also slammed the administration’s move to cancel the peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, saying that the cancellation would be damaging to the indigenous’ peoples struggle for rights.

The post IP groups want Duterte ousted appeared first on Manila Today.

“A welcome development.”

This is how members of terminated outsourced employees of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) under the banner of the PLDT Organization of Workers and Employees for Rights (POWER) see the sponsorship of Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resource Development chairman, Senator Joel Villanueva of the Senate Bill No. 1826 or the proposed Security of Tenure Act.

The statement is made as POWER president Dan Joshua Nazario joined the public hearing aganst contractualization in the Senate today along with workers of Nutri Asia, management officials, concerned government agencies, and various labor groups including Defend Job Philippines and Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU).

Senate Bill 1826 or the Security of Tenure Bill seeks to prohibit labor-only contracting, limit job contracting to licensed & specialized fields, provide penalty for violation, and simplify the classification of workers into regular and probationary – and treat project and seasonal employees as regular.

“We warmly welcome and extend our sincerest gratitude and appreciation to Senator Villanueva in his move to legislate a law that will provide security of tenure and will end endo across the country,” said Nazario during the Senate public hearing.

He added, “We are in high hopes that a law shall pass ensuring the workers’ right security of tenure. We welcome this as a positive first step towards eventually ending all forms of contractualization which hampers workers’ access to adequate rights, wages and benefits.”

Nazario also urged the Senate to look into the case of PLDT which has yet to implement the DOLE’s final and executory order to immediately regularize its 7,309 contractual employees.

During the hearing, members of POWER also joined other labor groups under the KMU-Nagkaisa labor coalition in a picket protest against contractualization outside the Senate gate in Pasay City.

Nazario belied claims of the Court of Appeals on its previous decision reversing DOLE compliance regularization order, which limits line of works that should be regularized by the telco giant.

The group insisted the justness for them to be called regular employees of PLDT as their work is considered necessary, vital, and desirable to the production cycle inside the telecom company.

Nazario and fellow PLDT workers said that their struggle for regularization will not end in the Senate. “We vow to hold a series of mass actions in the days to come to assert our rights to be called regular employees of PLDT wherever this battle may lead us,” he said.

The post Terminated outsourced PLDT workers welcome Senate Bill vs. endo appeared first on Manila Today.