BACOLOD City – Extreme poverty hits sugarcane plantation workers in August of every year during “tiempo muerto,” worsened this year by the tax reform law, a group said.
A law imposing a P750 minimum daily wage would “end this vicious cycle,” according to the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NSFW).
Christian Tuayon, NSFW chairperson, called workers in the agriculture and fishery sectors as the “real heroes” because they “feed the nation.”
The Philippines observed the National Heroes’ Day on Monday.
Also called the “dead season,” tiempo muerto affects workers in the highly sugar industry-dependent Negros Island “year in and year out,” said Tuayon.
Extreme poverty “is at its worst this year” because of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, Tuayon said.
The TRAIN law raised the ceiling for income tax but set yearly increments in the excise taxes on oil and fuel products until 2020.
“Cash assistance and dole-outs from the government did not address hunger in the countryside, and this resulted to massive urban migration,” said Tuayon.
To lessen the impact of the TRAIN law among workers, the government must implement a P750 across-the-board national minimum daily wage law, said the NSFW leader.
Moreover, genuine land reform will make farmworkers more productive and “hunger a thing of the past,” he said./PN
